Agile Development

Agile
 Commercial software development was process
driven – heavy in documentation, management
 Changes were hard to manage and caused
challenges in design/project management
 By 1990s people felt that change was too frequent
and essential, and processes too heavy and slow to
handle it

 Agile development came as an answer/response

Agile Approaches
 Iterative development approach
 Each iteration is self contained
 Leads to an iteration release that integrates all
components across the team
 Each iteration moves software closer to final system
 Often iterations fixed in duration
 I.e. features/requirements are adjusted to fit the
schedule, not the other way around
 Can avoid “feature bloat”
 Iterations often short duration
 Instead of many months, a few weeks (1 to 4)

3
Principles
 The champions wrote an “Agile Manifesto” (2001)
 Some values articulated in it:
 Working software over comprehensive documentation
 Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
 Responding to change over following a plan
 Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
 It is stating that the first item is valued more (does not
mean that the second item is valueless)
 Many implications
 Light on documentation – more on interaction/collaboration
 Light on planning (and management)
 Focus on code, light on methodologies like modeling, etc
 Software development viewed as an evolution

4
The Agile Manifesto
 Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and
continuous delivery of valuable software.
 Welcome changing requirements, even late in development.
Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive
advantage.
 Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a
couple of months, with a preference to the shorter time scale.
 Business people and developers must work together daily
through the project.
 Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the
environment and support they need, and trust them to get the
job done.
 The most efficient and effective method of conveying
information to and within a development team is face-to-face
conversation.
 Working software is the primary measure of progress.

5
The Agile Manifesto…
 Agile processes promote sustainable development.
 The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to
maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
 Continuous attention to technical excellence and good
design enhances agility.
 Simplicity – the art of maximizing the amount of work
not done – is essential.
 The best architectures, requirements, and designs
emerge from self-organizing teams.
 At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to
become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its
behavior accordingly.

6
Agile Approaches
 Many methods evolved (with their own process)
 Main ones:
 Extreme Programming (XP)
 SCRUM
 Lean software development
 Crystal
 Feature Driven Development
 …
 Agile processes need a culture to succeed
 We will briefly discuss one – XP. XP has many
practices; some relate to project management,
others to engineering

7
Agile (XP) – PM practices
 There is a project manager, who is also the interface with
external groups
 Team - Small, cross-functional (< a dozen)
 Sit together in open office format
 Continuity – keep team together
 Shrinks with time – as experience grows, reduce team
 Customer rep (or someone acting as one)
 Planning game – planning is not done at the start of the
project, but for an iteration, reviewed weekly
 Release Planning. Write stories to capture requirements; estimate
effort for impl. a story; sort them by value and risk; adjust as
needed
 Iteration planning. At wk start – review of progress, and plan for
this iteration – stories to be implemented, broken in tasks, …
 Task list. Tasks (0.5 to 3 days) for user stories to be completed in
this iteration; team members volunteer for tasks

8
PM Practices
 Daily stand-up meetings. Each member updates on
work done, what is planned today, difficulties;
pairs may be formed in this meeting
 40 hr week for developers
 Customer involvement. Ready availability for
clarifications; a rep may be with the team
 Customer acceptance tests. Are to be developed
by the customer; may be automated

9
Technical Practices…
 User stories. High level requirements (not full
specs) – details developed through interaction,
priority (by customer), estimates (by developer)
 Coding standards to be adopted and followed
 Pair programming. Two programmers work
together at one computer, collaborating…
 This has been studied very widely
 Test-first programming. Also called test driven
development (TDD); for all stories at least one AT
designed early, tests added as code develops –
automated test scripts

10
Technical Practices…
 Continuous integration. Code can be checked in only if
passes its unit tests, and tests of the entire code; code
checked in daily
 Simple, incremental design. Initial design simple; need
not handle contingencies; Keep refining design as
system evolves
 Design change may require refactoring – additional effort; is
a whole technical area
 Refactoring. Change design without changing functionality
 Iterative development and deployment. Usually
timeboxed iterations. Often iterations will result in
deployment
 Shared code. Once checked in, anyone in team can
alter the code, i.e. collective ownership
11
Impact on Agile Use
 Developers: needs strong developers; not able to
accommodate technically weak ones
 Testers: Automated testing requires different types
of testers who can build scripts
 Project managers. More collaborative, share
decision making, handle more change
 Customers. Have to be more involved, spend more
time (a rep may be needed full time)
 Executive management. Culturally different - little
documentation, weak estimation upfront, ..

12
Practice Usage (where adopted)

Used often Used infrequently

Daily stand-up  TDD
Iterative development
Coding standards
 Pair programming
Continuous integration  Simple design,
Unit testing refactoring
40 hr work week  On-site customer
Open office
Planning game (prioritized
work list, iteration..)
…

13
Benefits of Agile and Key Success Factors

Benefits (perceived, actual) Important success factors

 Productivity  Ability of programmers
 Customer relationship  Project management
 Managing req change
 Organization culture
 Quality
 Contract practices
 Team satisfaction
 Reduce cycle time
 Team commn.
 Improved learning
 …
14