CSC/ECE 517 Fall 2011/ch5 6d ny

Agile Landscape

Introduction

Agile- denoting “the quality of being agile; readiness for motion; nimbleness, activity, dexterity in motion ” is a group of software development methodologies based on iterative and incremental development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams.

The term “Agile Software Development” was introduced in 2001 by Agile Software Development Manifesto published by a group of software practitioners and consultants. The important aspects of this Manifesto are,

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.
• Working software over comprehensive documentation.
• Customer collaborations over contract negotiation.
• Responding to change over following plan.

Flowchart

Agile Development Life cycle

Agile Software development processes are based on iterative and incremental development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams.Agile processes use feedback, rather than planning, as their primary control mechanism. The feedback is driven by regular tests and releases of the evolving software.

Different Methodologies

• Extreme Programming(XP)
• Scrum
• Crystal family of Methodologies
• Feature Driven Development
• Rational Unified Process
• Dynamic Systems Development
• Adaptive Software Development
• Open Source Software Development
• Agile Modelling
• Pragmatic Programming

Evidence to support the effectiveness of Agile Development

Adopting and then tailoring a software process to meet your team’s needs is an important and difficult decision, one that is critical to your project’s success. There are a myriad of choices. So it is important to determine whether an agile development methodology works effectively within your environment. There is growing survey evidence that agile works better than traditional. The DDJ 2007 Project Success Survey showed that when people define success in their own terms that Agile projects had a 72% success rate, compared with 63% for traditional and 43% for offshoring. These figures are summarized in Figure 2.

FIGURE

Craig Larman,in his book Agile and Iterative Development: A Manager's Guide makes a very good argument that proof exists that shows that many of the common practices within agile software development do in fact work, practices such as incremental delivery and iterative approaches which embrace change.  He also cites evidence which shows that serial approaches to development, larger projects, and longer release cycles lead to greater incidences project failure. 

FIGURE

Effectiveness of agile methodology can be proved with feedback cycle which indicated the time in which response is obtained. Agile techniques are found to have very short feedback cycles, often on the order of minutes or hours whereas traditional techniques, such as reviews, inspections, and big requirements up front (BRUF) have feedback cycles on the order of weeks or months, making them riskier and on average more expensive.

From the surveys and the present organizational scenario, people's experience with agile software development can be observed to be very positive, and that adopting agile strategies appears to be very low-risk in practice.

Conclusion

To conclude, agile software development stresses rapid iterations, small and frequent releases, and evolving requirements facilitated by direct user involvement in the development process. This development isn’t a managerial free-for-all. It requires discipline and adherence to processes, even when those processes are not burdensome. When it comes to methodologies, each project is different. One thing is clear: that there is no “one-size-fits-all” solution.