Chapter 3 – Agile Software Development

Chapter 3 – Agile Software Development
30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Chapter 3 Agile Software Development
Topics covered Agile methods XP SCRUM 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Rapid software development
Rapid development and delivery is now often the most important requirement for software systems Businesses operate in a fast –changing requirement and it is practically impossible to produce a set of stable software requirements Software has to evolve quickly to reflect changing business needs. Plan-driven development is essential for some types of system but does not meet these business needs. Agile development methods emerged in the late 1990s whose aim was to radically reduce the delivery time for working software systems 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Agile development Program specification, design and implementation are inter-leaved The system is developed as a series of versions or increments with stakeholders involved in version specification and evaluation Frequent delivery of new versions for evaluation Extensive tool support (e.g. automated testing tools) used to support development. Minimal documentation – focus on working code 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Plan-driven and agile development

Plan-driven and agile development
Plan-driven development A plan-driven approach to software engineering is based around separate development stages with the outputs to be produced at each of these stages planned in advance. Not necessarily waterfall model – plan-driven, incremental development is possible Iteration occurs within activities. Agile development Specification, design, implementation and testing are inter- leaved and the outputs from the development process are decided through a process of negotiation during the software development process. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Agile methods 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Agile methods Dissatisfaction with the overheads involved in software design methods of the 1980s and 1990s led to the creation of agile methods. These methods: Focus on the code rather than the design Are based on an iterative approach to software development Are intended to deliver working software quickly and evolve this quickly to meet changing requirements. The aim of agile methods is to reduce overheads in the software process (e.g. by limiting documentation) and to be able to respond quickly to changing requirements without excessive rework. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Agile manifesto We are uncovering better ways of developing  software by doing it and helping others do it.  Through this work we have come to value: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Working software over comprehensive documentation Customer collaboration over contract negotiation Responding to change over following a plan That is, while there is value in the items on  the right, we value the items on the left more. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

The principles of agile methods
Description Customer involvement Customers should be closely involved throughout the development process. Their role is provide and prioritize new system requirements and to evaluate the iterations of the system. Incremental delivery The software is developed in increments with the customer specifying the requirements to be included in each increment. People not process The skills of the development team should be recognized and exploited. Team members should be left to develop their own ways of working without prescriptive processes. Embrace change Expect the system requirements to change and so design the system to accommodate these changes. Maintain simplicity Focus on simplicity in both the software being developed and in the development process. Wherever possible, actively work to eliminate complexity from the system. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Agile method applicability
Product development where a software company is developing a small or medium-sized product for sale. Virtually all software products and apps are now developed using an agile approach Custom system development within an organization, where there is a clear commitment from the customer to become involved in the development process and where there are few external rules and regulations that affect the software. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Agile development techniques

Extreme programming A very influential agile method, developed in the late s, that introduced a range of agile development techniques. Extreme Programming (XP) takes an ‘extreme’ approach to iterative development. New versions may be built several times per day; Increments are delivered to customers every 2 weeks; All tests must be run for every build and the build is only accepted if tests run successfully. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

The extreme programming release cycle

Extreme programming practices (a)
Principle or practice Description Incremental planning Requirements are recorded on story cards and the stories to be included in a release are determined by the time available and their relative priority. The developers break these stories into development ‘Tasks’. See Figures 3.5 and 3.6. Small releases The minimal useful set of functionality that provides business value is developed first. Releases of the system are frequent and incrementally add functionality to the first release. Simple design Enough design is carried out to meet the current requirements and no more. Test-first development An automated unit test framework is used to write tests for a new piece of functionality before that functionality itself is implemented. Refactoring All developers are expected to refactor the code continuously as soon as possible code improvements are found. This keeps the code simple and maintainable. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Extreme programming practices (b)
Pair programming Developers work in pairs, checking each other’s work and providing the support to always do a good job. Collective ownership The pairs of developers work on all areas of the system, so that no islands of expertise develop and all the developers take responsibility for all of the code. Anyone can change anything. Continuous integration As soon as the work on a task is complete, it is integrated into the whole system. After any such integration, all the unit tests in the system must pass. Sustainable pace Large amounts of overtime are not considered acceptable as the net effect is often to reduce code quality and medium term productivity On-site customer A representative of the end-user of the system (the customer) should be available full time for the use of the XP team. In an extreme programming process, the customer is a member of the development team and is responsible for bringing system requirements to the team for implementation. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

XP and agile principles
Incremental development is supported through small, frequent system releases. Customer involvement means full-time customer engagement with the team. People not process through pair programming, collective ownership and a process that avoids long working hours. Change supported through regular system releases. Maintaining simplicity through constant refactoring of code. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Influential XP practices
Extreme programming has a technical focus and is not easy to integrate with management practice in most organizations. Consequently, while agile development uses practices from XP, the method as originally defined is not widely used. Key practices User stories for specification Refactoring Test-first development Pair programming 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

User stories for requirements
In XP, a customer or user is part of the XP team and is responsible for making decisions on requirements. User requirements are expressed as user stories or scenarios. These are written on cards and the development team break them down into implementation tasks. These tasks are the basis of schedule and cost estimates. The customer chooses the stories for inclusion in the next release based on their priorities and the schedule estimates. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

A ‘prescribing medication’ story

Examples of task cards for prescribing medication

Refactoring Conventional wisdom in software engineering is to design for change. It is worth spending time and effort anticipating changes as this reduces costs later in the life cycle. XP, however, maintains that this is not worthwhile as changes cannot be reliably anticipated. Rather, it proposes constant code improvement (refactoring) to make changes easier when they have to be implemented. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Refactoring Programming team look for possible software improvements and make these improvements even where there is no immediate need for them. This improves the understandability of the software and so reduces the need for documentation. Changes are easier to make because the code is well- structured and clear. However, some changes requires architecture refactoring and this is much more expensive. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Examples of refactoring
Re-organization of a class hierarchy to remove duplicate code. Tidying up and renaming attributes and methods to make them easier to understand. The replacement of inline code with calls to methods that have been included in a program library. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Test-first development
Testing is central to XP and XP has developed an approach where the program is tested after every change has been made. XP testing features: Test-first development. Incremental test development from scenarios. User involvement in test development and validation. Automated test harnesses are used to run all component tests each time that a new release is built. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Test-driven development
Writing tests before code clarifies the requirements to be implemented. Tests are written as programs rather than data so that they can be executed automatically. The test includes a check that it has executed correctly. Usually relies on a testing framework such as Junit. All previous and new tests are run automatically when new functionality is added, thus checking that the new functionality has not introduced errors. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Customer involvement The role of the customer in the testing process is to help develop acceptance tests for the stories that are to be implemented in the next release of the system. The customer who is part of the team writes tests as development proceeds. All new code is therefore validated to ensure that it is what the customer needs. However, people adopting the customer role have limited time available and so cannot work full-time with the development team. They may feel that providing the requirements was enough of a contribution and so may be reluctant to get involved in the testing process. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Test case description for dose checking

Test automation Test automation means that tests are written as executable components before the task is implemented These testing components should be stand-alone, should simulate the submission of input to be tested and should check that the result meets the output specification. An automated test framework (e.g. Junit) is a system that makes it easy to write executable tests and submit a set of tests for execution. As testing is automated, there is always a set of tests that can be quickly and easily executed Whenever any functionality is added to the system, the tests can be run and problems that the new code has introduced can be caught immediately. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Problems with test-first development
Programmers prefer programming to testing and sometimes they take short cuts when writing tests. For example, they may write incomplete tests that do not check for all possible exceptions that may occur. Some tests can be very difficult to write incrementally. For example, in a complex user interface, it is often difficult to write unit tests for the code that implements the ‘display logic’ and workflow between screens. It difficult to judge the completeness of a set of tests. Although you may have a lot of system tests, your test set may not provide complete coverage. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Pair programming Pair programming involves programmers working in pairs, developing code together. This helps develop common ownership of code and spreads knowledge across the team. It serves as an informal review process as each line of code is looked at by more than 1 person. It encourages refactoring as the whole team can benefit from improving the system code. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Pair programming In pair programming, programmers sit together at the same computer to develop the software. Pairs are created dynamically so that all team members work with each other during the development process. The sharing of knowledge that happens during pair programming is very important as it reduces the overall risks to a project when team members leave. Pair programming is not necessarily inefficient and there is some evidence that suggests that a pair working together is more efficient than 2 programmers working separately. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

What is a Methodology? A methodology is a formalized process or set of practices for creating software A set of rules you have to follow A set of conventions the organization decides to follow A systematical, engineering approach for organizing software projects

Or at worst … But this always ends up happening! The Waterfall Process
* 11/7/201707/16/96 The Waterfall Process The traditional development process: System Requirements Software Requirements Or at worst … Analysis But this always ends up happening! Program Design It’s only in testing that your design is tested against reality. At this point you always learn something about your design (usually that it is wrong!), and that tells you something about your requirements (ditto!) Coding Testing Operations (c) 2007 National Academy for Software Development - All rights reserved. Unauthorized copying or re-distribution is strictly prohibited.*

Formal efforts to “fix” the problem
Formal Processes Formal efforts to “fix” the problem System Requirements Preliminary Design Software Requirements Analysis Program Design Preliminary Design Coding Software Requirements Specification Testing Analysis Usage Prelim. Review Program Design Operating Instructions Preliminary Design Document Coding Final Design Testing UI Design Document Design Review Test Plan Operations

Agile Manifesto “Our highest priority is to satisfy the
customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software“ [Manifesto for Agile]

Incremental Cooperation Straightforward Adaptive
The Agile Spirit Incremental Working software over comprehensive documentation Cooperation Customer collaboration over contract negotiation Straightforward Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Adaptive Responding to change over following a plan

Agile Methodologies eXtreme Programming (XP) Scrum Crystal family of methodologies Feature-Driven Development (FDD) Adaptive Software Development (ASD) Dynamic System Development Model (DSDM) Agile Unified Process (AUP)

The XP Guru: Kent Beck eXtreme Programming
* 11/7/201707/16/96 The XP Guru: Kent Beck eXtreme Programming The most prominent agile development methodology Kent Beck 1st ed. Oct 1999 2nd ed. Nov 2004 (c) 2007 National Academy for Software Development - All rights reserved. Unauthorized copying or re-distribution is strictly prohibited.*

The 12 Key Practices The Planning Game Small Releases Metaphor Simple Design Test-Driven Development Refactoring Pair Programming Collective Ownership Continuous Integration 40-Hour Workweek On-site Customer Coding Standards

1. Metaphor Guide all development and conversations with a simple shared story of how the whole system works Gives the team a whole picture of describing the system, where new parts fit, etc. Words used to identify technical entities should be chosen from the metaphor The default metaphor is the business domain, and it’s usually just fine

Metaphors are good idea
Comments Metaphors are good idea People should know the business needs and how their work fits in the project

Requirements via User Stories
2. Release Planning Requirements via User Stories Short cards with natural language description of what a customer wants Prioritized by customer Resource and risk estimated by developers Via “The Planning Game” Play the Planning Game after each increment

User Stories

Requirements specification (SRS) is better than user stories
Real Life Requirements specification (SRS) is better than user stories Written documentation works well for large projects I prefer prototyping the user interface as source of documentation Sometimes its is hard to estimate the required resources Small releases have less risk

Test-Driven Development (TDD)
3. Testing Test-Driven Development (TDD) Write tests before code Tests are automated Often use xUnit framework Must run at 100% before proceeding Acceptance Tests Written with the customer Acts as “contract” Measure of progress

Test-Driven Development
* 11/7/201707/16/96 Test-Driven Development Developers write unit tests before coding Motivates coding Improves design: cohesion and coupling Provides regression tests Provides specification by example public void TestMultiplication() { Dollar five = Money.dollar(5); AssertEqual(new Dollar(10), five.times(2)); AssertEqual(new Dollar(15), five.times(3)); } (c) 2007 National Academy for Software Development - All rights reserved. Unauthorized copying or re-distribution is strictly prohibited.*

TDD is good for most projects, not for all
Comments TDD is good for most projects, not for all The real world is different: you always need the functionality "for tomorrow"! I use unit testing for complex logic only Testing simple logic is overhead

The navigator watches the driver’s implementation
4. Pair Programming Two software engineers work on one task at one computer The driver has control of the keyboard and mouse and creates the implementation The navigator watches the driver’s implementation Identifies defects and participates in on-demand brainstorming The roles of driver and observer are periodically rotated

Pairs produce higher quality code Pairs complete their tasks faster
Pair Programming Pairs produce higher quality code Pairs complete their tasks faster Pairs enjoy their work more Pairs feel more confident in their work

Pair programming is great for complex and critical logic
Comments Pair programming is great for complex and critical logic When developers need good concentration Where quality is really important Especially during design Reduces time wasting, e.g. ICQ chatting Trivial tasks can be done alone Peer reviews instead pair programming is often alternative

Improve the design of existing code without changing its functionality
5. Refactoring Improve the design of existing code without changing its functionality Relies on unit testing to ensure the code is not broken Bad smells in code: Long method / class Duplicate code Methods does several different things (bad cohesion) Too much dependencies (bad coupling) Complex / unreadable code

Delivering working software faster is important!
Comments Delivering working software faster is important! You can write the code to run somehow With simple design With less effort Later you can refactor the code if necessary Refactoring is not a reason to intentionally write bad code! Good coding style is always important!

No Big Design Up Front (BDUF)
6. Simple Design No Big Design Up Front (BDUF) Reduces the overhead Ship working functionality faster and get feedback early “Do The Simplest Thing That Could Possibly Work” Later use refactoring to change it Not too much formal documentation

Simple design does not mean "no design"
Cmments Simple design does not mean "no design" It is about establishing priorities It's a set of tradeoffs you make If something is important for this release and for the whole system, it should be designed well Don't lose time to design something you will not use soon!

7. Collective Code Ownership
Code to belongs to the project, not to an individual engineer! Any engineer can modify any code Better quality of the code Engineers are not required to work around deficiencies in code they do not own Faster progress No need to wait for someone else to fix something

Collective Code Ownership?

Collective code ownership is absolutely indispensable
Comments Collective code ownership is absolutely indispensable You need to fight the people who don't agree with this! Fire people writing unreadable and unmaintainable code Don't allow somebody to own some module and be irreplaceable

8. Continuous Integration
Pair writes up unit test cases and code for a task (part of a user story) Pair unit tests code to 100% Pair integrates Pair runs ALL unit test cases to 100% Pair moves on to next task with clean slate and clear mind Should happen once or twice a day

Think of automated build environment
Comments Integrating often is really valuable Sometimes you cannot finish a task for one day and integrate it For small projects with small teams integration is not an issue For large and complex projects it's crucial Think of automated build environment

Customer available on site
9. On-Site Customer Customer available on site Clarify user stories Make critical business decisions Developers don’t make assumptions Developers don’t have to wait for decisions Face to face communication minimizes the chances of misunderstanding

Meetings every day is working better
Comments On-site customer actually does not work! Customers are busy Meetings every day is working better Customers are not competent! Customers always say "Yes, this is what I want" and later say the opposite You need to think instead of them Use prototyping

As small as possible, but still delivering business value
10. Small Releases Timeboxed As small as possible, but still delivering business value No releases to ‘implement the database’ Get customer feedback early and often Do the planning game after each iteration Do they want something different? Have their priorities changed?

Release every few weeks Large projects are not so flexible
Comments Small releases are really valuable Manage the risk of delivering something wrong Helps the customer to define better requirements Release every few weeks Large projects are not so flexible Try to release something, even you know that it will be changed

Burning the midnight oil kills performance
11. Forty-Hour Work Week Kent Beck says, “ fresh and eager every morning, and tired and satisfied every night” Burning the midnight oil kills performance Tired developers make more mistakes Slows you down more in the long run If you mess with people’s personal lives (by taking it over), in the long run the project will pay the consequences

Better planning can help
Comments 40 hours a week or 40 hours without a sleep? Come back to the real world! Overtime is not recommendable but often can not be avoided Better planning can help Highly skilled senior engineers always suffer of overtime and high pressure That's how the business works!

Use coding conventions
12. Coding Standards Use coding conventions Rules for naming, formatting, etc. Write readable and maintainable code Method commenting Self-documenting code Don't comment bad code, rewrite it! Refactor to improve the design Use code audit tools (FxCop, CheckStyle, TFS)

Standards should be simple
Comments Coding standards are important Enforce good practices to whole the team – tools, code reviews, etc. Standards should be simple Complex standards are not followed Standards should be more strict for larger teams Developers don't like utter rules like "comment any class member"

The 13th Practice? The Stand Up Meeting
Start the day with 15-minute meeting Everyone stands up (so the meeting stays short) in circle Going around the room everyone says specifically: What they did the day before What they plan to do today Any obstacles they are experiencing Can be the way pairs are formed

People Communicate Most Effectively Face-to-Face
2 people at whiteboard 2 people on phone Communication effectiveness Videotape 2 people on Paper Richness of the communication channel

How XP Solve Some SE Problems
Solution Slipped schedule Short development cycles Cancelled project Intensive customer presence Cost of changes Extensive, ongoing testing, system always running Defect rates Unit tests, customer tests Misunderstand the business Customer part of the team Business changes Changes are welcome Staff turnover Intensive teamwork

So What does XP Apply to? Domains with changing requirements
High-risk projects (including those with high schedule risk) Small project team: 2 – 12 programmers Cannot be used with a large team Extended development team Developers, managers and customer Co-located Automated testability

Your Own Development Process?
* 11/7/201707/16/96 Your Own Development Process? (c) 2007 National Academy for Software Development - All rights reserved. Unauthorized copying or re-distribution is strictly prohibited.*

The practices in different agile methods can be extracted and combined
Mix-and-Match The practices in different agile methods can be extracted and combined Establish your own process Build it step-by-step Adapt good practices one by one Examples Pair programming and its variation Daily 15-minutes meeting Test-driven development

Agile Development and XP

Agile project management

Agile project management
The principal responsibility of software project managers is to manage the project so that the software is delivered on time and within the planned budget for the project. The standard approach to project management is plan- driven. Managers draw up a plan for the project showing what should be delivered, when it should be delivered and who will work on the development of the project deliverables. Agile project management requires a different approach, which is adapted to incremental development and the practices used in agile methods. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Scrum Scrum is an agile method that focuses on managing iterative development rather than specific agile practices. There are three phases in Scrum. The initial phase is an outline planning phase where you establish the general objectives for the project and design the software architecture. This is followed by a series of sprint cycles, where each cycle develops an increment of the system. The project closure phase wraps up the project, completes required documentation such as system help frames and user manuals and assesses the lessons learned from the project. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Scrum terminology (a) Scrum term Definition Development team A self-organizing group of software developers, which should be no more than 7 people. They are responsible for developing the software and other essential project documents. Potentially shippable product increment The software increment that is delivered from a sprint. The idea is that this should be ‘potentially shippable’ which means that it is in a finished state and no further work, such as testing, is needed to incorporate it into the final product. In practice, this is not always achievable. Product backlog This is a list of ‘to do’ items which the Scrum team must tackle. They may be feature definitions for the software, software requirements, user stories or descriptions of supplementary tasks that are needed, such as architecture definition or user documentation. Product owner An individual (or possibly a small group) whose job is to identify product features or requirements, prioritize these for development and continuously review the product backlog to ensure that the project continues to meet critical business needs. The Product Owner can be a customer but might also be a product manager in a software company or other stakeholder representative. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Scrum terminology (b) Scrum term Definition Scrum A daily meeting of the Scrum team that reviews progress and prioritizes work to be done that day. Ideally, this should be a short face-to-face meeting that includes the whole team. ScrumMaster The ScrumMaster is responsible for ensuring that the Scrum process is followed and guides the team in the effective use of Scrum. He or she is responsible for interfacing with the rest of the company and for ensuring that the Scrum team is not diverted by outside interference. The Scrum developers are adamant that the ScrumMaster should not be thought of as a project manager. Others, however, may not always find it easy to see the difference. Sprint A development iteration. Sprints are usually 2-4 weeks long. Velocity An estimate of how much product backlog effort that a team can cover in a single sprint. Understanding a team’s velocity helps them estimate what can be covered in a sprint and provides a basis for measuring improving performance. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Scrum sprint cycle 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

The Scrum sprint cycle Sprints are fixed length, normally 2–4 weeks. The starting point for planning is the product backlog, which is the list of work to be done on the project. The selection phase involves all of the project team who work with the customer to select the features and functionality from the product backlog to be developed during the sprint. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

The Sprint cycle Once these are agreed, the team organize themselves to develop the software. During this stage the team is isolated from the customer and the organization, with all communications channelled through the so-called ‘Scrum master’. The role of the Scrum master is to protect the development team from external distractions. At the end of the sprint, the work done is reviewed and presented to stakeholders. The next sprint cycle then begins. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Teamwork in Scrum The ‘Scrum master’ is a facilitator who arranges daily meetings, tracks the backlog of work to be done, records decisions, measures progress against the backlog and communicates with customers and management outside of the team. The whole team attends short daily meetings (Scrums) where all team members share information, describe their progress since the last meeting, problems that have arisen and what is planned for the following day. This means that everyone on the team knows what is going on and, if problems arise, can re-plan short-term work to cope with them. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Scrum benefits The product is broken down into a set of manageable and understandable chunks. Unstable requirements do not hold up progress. The whole team have visibility of everything and consequently team communication is improved. Customers see on-time delivery of increments and gain feedback on how the product works. Trust between customers and developers is established and a positive culture is created in which everyone expects the project to succeed. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Distributed Scrum 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Scaling agile methods 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Scaling agile methods Agile methods have proved to be successful for small and medium sized projects that can be developed by a small co-located team. It is sometimes argued that the success of these methods comes because of improved communications which is possible when everyone is working together. Scaling up agile methods involves changing these to cope with larger, longer projects where there are multiple development teams, perhaps working in different locations. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Scaling out and scaling up
‘Scaling up’ is concerned with using agile methods for developing large software systems that cannot be developed by a small team. ‘Scaling out’ is concerned with how agile methods can be introduced across a large organization with many years of software development experience. When scaling agile methods it is importaant to maintain agile fundamentals: Flexible planning, frequent system releases, continuous integration, test-driven development and good team communications. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Practical problems with agile methods
The informality of agile development is incompatible with the legal approach to contract definition that is commonly used in large companies. Agile methods are most appropriate for new software development rather than software maintenance. Yet the majority of software costs in large companies come from maintaining their existing software systems. Agile methods are designed for small co-located teams yet much software development now involves worldwide distributed teams. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Contractual issues Most software contracts for custom systems are based around a specification, which sets out what has to be implemented by the system developer for the system customer. However, this precludes interleaving specification and development as is the norm in agile development. A contract that pays for developer time rather than functionality is required. However, this is seen as a high risk my many legal departments because what has to be delivered cannot be guaranteed. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Agile methods and software maintenance
Most organizations spend more on maintaining existing software than they do on new software development. So, if agile methods are to be successful, they have to support maintenance as well as original development. Two key issues: Are systems that are developed using an agile approach maintainable, given the emphasis in the development process of minimizing formal documentation? Can agile methods be used effectively for evolving a system in response to customer change requests? Problems may arise if original development team cannot be maintained. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Agile maintenance Key problems are: Lack of product documentation Keeping customers involved in the development process Maintaining the continuity of the development team Agile development relies on the development team knowing and understanding what has to be done. For long-lifetime systems, this is a real problem as the original developers will not always work on the system. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Agile and plan-driven methods
Most projects include elements of plan-driven and agile processes. Deciding on the balance depends on: Is it important to have a very detailed specification and design before moving to implementation? If so, you probably need to use a plan-driven approach. Is an incremental delivery strategy, where you deliver the software to customers and get rapid feedback from them, realistic? If so, consider using agile methods. How large is the system that is being developed? Agile methods are most effective when the system can be developed with a small co-located team who can communicate informally. This may not be possible for large systems that require larger development teams so a plan-driven approach may have to be used. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Agile principles and organizational practice
Customer involvement This depends on having a customer who is willing and able to spend time with the development team and who can represent all system stakeholders. Often, customer representatives have other demands on their time and cannot play a full part in the software development. Where there are external stakeholders, such as regulators, it is difficult to represent their views to the agile team. Embrace change Prioritizing changes can be extremely difficult, especially in systems for which there are many stakeholders. Typically, each stakeholder gives different priorities to different changes. Incremental delivery Rapid iterations and short-term planning for development does not always fit in with the longer-term planning cycles of business planning and marketing. Marketing managers may need to know what product features several months in advance to prepare an effective marketing campaign. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Agile principles and organizational practice
Maintain simplicity Under pressure from delivery schedules, team members may not have time to carry out desirable system simplifications. People not process Individual team members may not have suitable personalities for the intense involvement that is typical of agile methods, and therefore may not interact well with other team members. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Agile and plan-based factors

System issues How large is the system being developed? Agile methods are most effective a relatively small co-located team who can communicate informally. What type of system is being developed? Systems that require a lot of analysis before implementation need a fairly detailed design to carry out this analysis. What is the expected system lifetime? Long-lifetime systems require documentation to communicate the intentions of the system developers to the support team. Is the system subject to external regulation? If a system is regulated you will probably be required to produce detailed documentation as part of the system safety case. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

People and teams How good are the designers and programmers in the development team? It is sometimes argued that agile methods require higher skill levels than plan-based approaches in which programmers simply translate a detailed design into code. How is the development team organized? Design documents may be required if the team is dsitributed. What support technologies are available? IDE support for visualisation and program analysis is essential if design documentation is not available. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Organizational issues
Traditional engineering organizations have a culture of plan-based development, as this is the norm in engineering. Is it standard organizational practice to develop a detailed system specification? Will customer representatives be available to provide feedback of system increments? Can informal agile development fit into the organizational culture of detailed documentation? 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Agile methods for large systems
Large systems are usually collections of separate, communicating systems, where separate teams develop each system. Frequently, these teams are working in different places, sometimes in different time zones. Large systems are ‘brownfield systems’, that is they include and interact with a number of existing systems. Many of the system requirements are concerned with this interaction and so don’t really lend themselves to flexibility and incremental development. Where several systems are integrated to create a system, a significant fraction of the development is concerned with system configuration rather than original code development. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Large system development
Large systems and their development processes are often constrained by external rules and regulations limiting the way that they can be developed. Large systems have a long procurement and development time. It is difficult to maintain coherent teams who know about the system over that period as, inevitably, people move on to other jobs and projects. Large systems usually have a diverse set of stakeholders. It is practically impossible to involve all of these different stakeholders in the development process. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Factors in large systems

IBM’s agility at scale model

Scaling up to large systems
A completely incremental approach to requirements engineering is impossible. There cannot be a single product owner or customer representative. For large systems development, it is not possible to focus only on the code of the system. Cross-team communication mechanisms have to be designed and used. Continuous integration is practically impossible. However, it is essential to maintain frequent system builds and regular releases of the system. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Multi-team Scrum Role replication Each team has a Product Owner for their work component and ScrumMaster. Product architects Each team chooses a product architect and these architects collaborate to design and evolve the overall system architecture. Release alignment The dates of product releases from each team are aligned so that a demonstrable and complete system is produced. Scrum of Scrums There is a daily Scrum of Scrums where representatives from each team meet to discuss progressand plan work to be done. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Agile methods across organizations
Project managers who do not have experience of agile methods may be reluctant to accept the risk of a new approach. Large organizations often have quality procedures and standards that all projects are expected to follow and, because of their bureaucratic nature, these are likely to be incompatible with agile methods. Agile methods seem to work best when team members have a relatively high skill level. However, within large organizations, there are likely to be a wide range of skills and abilities. There may be cultural resistance to agile methods, especially in those organizations that have a long history of using conventional systems engineering processes. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Key points Agile methods are incremental development methods that focus on rapid software development, frequent releases of the software, reducing process overheads by minimizing documentation and producing high-quality code. Agile development practices include User stories for system specification Frequent releases of the software, Continuous software improvement Test-first development Customer participation in the development team. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Key points Scrum is an agile method that provides a project management framework. It is centred round a set of sprints, which are fixed time periods when a system increment is developed. Many practical development methods are a mixture of plan-based and agile development. Scaling agile methods for large systems is difficult. Large systems need up-front design and some documentation and organizational practice may conflict with the informality of agile approaches. 30/10/2014 Chapter 3 Agile Software Development

Chapter 3 – Agile Software Development

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Chapter 3 – Agile Software Development

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