Introduction

This card describes the final project for a Digital Logic Design course that fifty-six junior and senior Electrical Engineering and Computer Science students at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville have taken. The project contains combinational and sequential digital design, and the Scrum development framework, and innovation methodology.

The course requires students to master basic combinational circuits (e.g. the multiplexer, demultiplexer, coder, decoder, etc.), and sequential circuits (e.g. the registers,  and counters design) to implement certain functions.

Scrum is one of the most popular frameworks adopted by many technology companies, such as Apple, Facebook, Google, and Netflix. It works by breaking large products into small modules that can be completed (and potentially released) in a short timeframe.

As a Scrum Master with many years of industry experience, I designed a mini Scrum project including a single sprint, requiring each group of three to four students, to organize as a multifunction team, to deliver a product with incremental innovative function(s) implemented with their digital design skills.

The mini Scrum takes about six to eight weeks, including three stages of an entrepreneur’s journey. The first stage happens in the middle of the semester, including two activities.

1. Students learn the basic Scrum frame procedures and duties of different roles in the multifunction team, including the product owner (product manager), scrum master (project manager), hardware engineer, software engineer, and tester. 
   
   
2. Students learn the methodology of innovation. They are required to read negative customer reviews of a simple electronic product, e.g. a timer to find the pain points of that product., then create “user stories” to address the pain points. The user stories must satisfy the Scrum required format and follow the 3C principle(Card, Conversation, Confirmation). The product owner is a major role in this step.

The second stage happens three to four weeks before the end of the semester. It includes four activities:

1. Students create a “product backlog” to introduce the innovative functions they would like to design with their knowledge to solve the pain points.  The team will discuss the functions with the professor to ensure they can solve them with the scope of the class. The agreement of “done” should be clearly defined for the project as well as for each function.

   When students design the functions, several entrepreneur mindsets (EM) learning outcomes are cultivated

   First, explore a contrarian view of accepted solutions. Many innovations start from questioning and improving the existing solutions. One group of my students question the common practice of “using the same volume during the timer alarms”, and invented an increasing volume timer. Their work is included in the students' artifacts.

   Second, demonstrate constant curiosity about our changing world. The new solutions many times including observing our fast-changing environment to find the aspects to improve.

   The first two mindsets together will enable students to identify unexpected opportunities to create extraordinary values. One group of my students invented an eyesight protection timer which reminds the 20-20-20 rule (every 20 minutes spent using a screen; you should try to look away at something that is 20 feet away from you for a total of 20 seconds), for the pandemic all-day-screen situations. More examples will be offered in the students' artifacts.

   Students will also learn how to assess and manage risk. They will make decisions to prioritize critical functions to be implemented in the later stages even before learning the curriculum knowledge. They have to work in the "Agile" mode to implement their deliverables.

2. Students discuss their product implementation proposal with the consideration of the cost, scope, time, and possible legal/ethical issues. Discussing and presenting multiple solutions to find a preferred one is encouraged in this stage.  The Scrum Master (project manager ) is the organizer of the two steps above. 

   This step will help students developing their curiosity about the curriculum knowledge, and them apply their knowledge to implement the functions that creating value.

3. Students collaborate using their curriculum knowledge to implement and deliver their solutions.  During the Covid-19 pandemic, simulations are allowed in place of hardware implementation.  The engineer is responsible for organizing the activity in this step.

    

4. The team is required to prepare both module functional testing and integration testing plans and perform testing against their testing plans. The tester should sign off all testing results.

During the testing step, the testing group members try their best to find the breakpoints (failure cases) against the engineer group members. This process will help them grow the EM of persisting through and learning from failure.

The last stage is during the final week, the team makes presentations to demonstrate their deliverable products and project review. The other teams will provide feedback on the presentation and demonstration.  After receiving questions and feedback, each team is required to submit a final report with a project retrospective.

In this project, students learn to listen to customers and create what they need; small-step innovation as they build, evaluate, and improve the design; collaborate as a cross-function team united to deliver innovative solutions with the curriculum knowledge. They also explore their potentials in different areas to enrich their entrepreneurial mindset.

Through this process, students will also learn some basic Scrum concepts, e.g. the user story, product backlog, product increment, sprint planning, and the five values that all Scrum teams share: commitment, courage, focus, openness, and respect.

The material included in this card including the Scrum process diagram, user story template, product requirement proposal template, product implementation proposal template, testing plan template, final project proposal template, and peer evaluation rubrics.

This card can also be modified to promote innovation in other engineering disciplines. The collaboration among different disciplines may provide an even more authentic learning experience and amplify the multi-function team's delivering power.