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International Journal of Development Research

ISSN: 2230-9926 Vol. 14, Issue, 08, pp. 66405-66408, August, 2024
https://doi.org/10.37118/ijdr.28614.08.2024

RESEARCH ARTICLE OPEN ACCESS

FUTURE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

1Mariyam Mahboob 2Mohammed Rayyan Uddin Ahmed, 3Zoiba Zia, 1Mariam Shakeel Ali
and 3Ayman Khaleel Ahmed
1Student[IT Department], Muffakham Jah College of Engineering and Technology, Hyderabad, India
2Student[CSE Department], Muffakham Jah College of Engineering and Technology, Hyderabad, India
3Student [AI-DS Department], Muffakham Jah College of Engineering and Technology, Hyderabad, India

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Article History: The advent of Artificial intelligence has promising advantages that can be utilized to transform the landscape
of software project development. The Software process framework consists of activities that constantly require
Received 17th May, 2024
routine human interaction, leading to the possibility of errors and uncertainties. AI can assist software
Received in revised form
development managers, software testers, and other team members by leveraging LLMs, GenAI models, and
29th June, 2024
AI agents to perform routine tasks, risk analysis and prediction, strategy recommendations, and support
Accepted 06th July, 2024
decision-making. AI has the potential to increase efficiency and reduce the risks encountered by the project
Published online 30th August, 2024
management team while increasing the project success rates. Additionally, it can also break down complex
Key Words: notions and development processes for stakeholders to make informed decisions. In this paper, we propose an
approach in which AI tools and technologies can be utilized to bestow maximum assistance for agile software
Software Development, Agile Software Development, projects, which have become increasingly favored in the industry in recent years.
Artificial Intelligence, Generative Artificial
Intelligence.
Corresponding Author: Mariyam Mahboob,

Copyright©2024, Mariyam Mahboob Mohammed Rayyan Uddin Ahmed et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution
License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Citation: Mariyam Mahboob Mohammed Rayyan Uddin Ahmed, Zoiba Zia, Mariam Shakeel Ali and Ayman Khaleel Ahmed. 2024. “Future of artificial
Intelligence in Agile Software Development”. International Journal of Development Research, 14, (08), 66405-66408.

INTRODUCTION intervention, a gap that artificial intelligence (AI) aims to bridge. By

leveraging AI tools such as Large Language Models (LLMs),
autonomous agents, and AI algorithms, systems can simulate risk
AI has certainly transformed our lives in ways that we cannot management, project trajectory planning and provide estimated pros
comprehend. Due to reduced computational costs and breakthroughs and cons while continuously learning from decisions made
in algorithms, AI has excelled in domains like decision-making, throughout the development stages
pattern recognition, and natural language processing. Consequently,
AI has become increasingly integrated into software engineering,
effectively minimizing human errors [1]. Project management is a HISTORY
discipline that seeks to optimize a team’s efforts and resources in the
development of a project through various models that provide a Over the last several decades, the software industry has undergone
framework for team management, decision-making, risk mitigation, many developments and transformations in numerous software
and customer satisfaction. One popular software project management development methodologies. Each method possessed eccentric
model that has gained acceptance in the industry is the agile qualities that distinguished it from other methods. One of the methods
development model. Agile development methodology relies heavily was the Traditional Software Development Method (TDSM), which
on the concept of a product backlog, which serves as a repository of was largely composed of waterfall and spiral methods that depended
user requirements that expand as demands evolve. A backlog is on well-organized planning, process, documentation, and
further divided into smaller, actionable tasks that are scheduled by the comprehensive design. The TSDMs are still widely used in industry
development team, leading to project delivery in incremental because of their straightforward, organized, and structured nature and
milestones. This approach effectively mitigates risks by segmenting their predictability, stability, and high assurance [2]. Though many
the development costs into multiple stages or sprints. The agile TSDMs have been developed since the waterfall model to provide
process encompasses various iterations or sprints, starting from significant productivity improvements, none are free from major
gathering user stories and feedback to ideation, planning, and problems including blown budgets, missed schedules, and flawed
execution. Although numerous tools that assist the agile framework products. They have failed to provide dramatic improvements in
exist, for example, JIRA which aids in data collection and task productivity, in reliability, and simplicity [3].
management, decision-making still predominantly relies on human
66406 Mariyam Mahboob et al., Future of artificial Intelligence in agile Software Development

Challenges in the Agile Software Development Process quality at the cost of more labor and time. These serious issues can be
significantly reduced by integrating modern artificial intelligence at
Agile Software Development Methods: To address the limitations of various stages of the agile software development process, such as
Traditional Software Development Models (TSDMs), numerous Extreme Programming (XP) and Lean Software Development (LSD).
Agile Software Development Methods like Scrum, Extreme Modern Artificial intelligence, which consists of Generative Artificial
Programming (XP), and Lean Software Development (LSD) have Intelligence, AI agents, AI algorithms, and LLM-based applications,
evolved which focus on iterative and incremental development, can streamline the agile software development process by offering
customer collaboration, and frequent delivery[4] through a light and innovative solutions to enhance efficiency, collaboration, and
fast development life cycle. Although many benefits of agile adaptability. Generative AI, through its ability to analyze patterns and
approaches including shorter development cycles, higher customer generate deterministic ideas, can assist teams in decision-making, and
satisfaction, lower bug rate, and quicker adaptation to changing ideation, and can overcome hurdles caused by human errors while
business requirements have been reported [2], XP has emerged as a also nurturing a culture of continuous, uninterrupted innovation [9].
solution to issues that existed due to the long development cycles of However, that is not to say, such tools haven’t existed in the past.
traditional models. Despite constant changes in requirements in small Tools similar to the above have existed, but they’re limited in their
and medium-sized teams, it’s proven successful in software abilities to assist the development and management team. The
development. The main characteristics of XP include customer existing agile tools such as JIRA, Assembla, and Axosoft help with
participation, coordination, communication, quick feedback, precise project management that is user stories, product backlogs, sprints, and
documentation, and pair programming. Lean Software Development sprint backlogs [10]. The existing tools do not go beyond the scope of
(LSD) is an iterative methodology that focuses on reducing waste and management to make agile software project development and
optimizing the entire process to achieve the maximum possible management a seamlessly integrated process with minimal erroneous
gain[8]. It focuses on quick and efficient feedback between customers cases. The emergence of numerous generative software platforms
and software developers to attain better productivity, workflow, and enables the conversion of textual commands to programming code.
development. It does not adhere to firm guidelines and therefore is Developmental tools such as Visual Studio Code, JetBrains IDE, and
considered to be one of the most flexible Agile Methods. other IDEs can be expanded in their capabilities to assist the
programmer with the integration of GitHub Copilot. GitHub Copilot
Issues and Challenges: XP is arguably one of the best methods is an AI assistant built on top of OpenAI Codex, a generative AI
provided that the project has to be completed in a shorter time frame. system developed by OpenAI.
It prioritizes a fast-paced working environment for prototyping,
unlike other methods that consume more time. The XP programmers The recent release of GPT-4o has propelled companies like Microsoft
emphasize and prioritize software coding tasks rather than to fuse AI with operating systems to make the development of new
documentation tasks. Since numerous changes cannot be documented applications and software much easier [11]. IBM’s Watson, which is
systematically, there is a high possibility of unexpected failures that renowned for its natural language processing and cognitive
cannot be tracked. Lack of precise documentation leads to the computing, has also been implemented for many obstacles faced in
recurrence of bugs and errors that were resolved earlier. Furthermore, the software engineering process. Watson leverages AI to analyze
In extreme programming, meetings are held frequently with the unstructured data which includes but is not limited to documentation,
customers/investors regarding the progression made on tasks daily. forums, and code repositories. It also supports developers by
This serves to be an issue as it costs additional time while meeting the providing insights and helping them navigate complex codebases
programmers face-to-face can result in exhaustion when the customer [12]. Likewise, the integration of generative AI models can mitigate
has a fairly distant location. The main idea of coding (and one of the developmental challenges and project management challenges in the
most XP aspects) is to implement pair programming. It is agile software development process. Some of the key features of XP
recommended by the XP that a development team of two members are pair programming, test-first, coding standards, continuous
share one computer and implement side-by-side software. One integration, metaphor, and refactoring. Generative AI models like
developer writes the code, while the other developer challenges, GitHub Copilot can be integrated to assist the programmer as well as
supports, and observes the selected method to obtain better results [5]. test the code as soon as it’s written to check if there are no errors, as a
This extensive pair programming increases the expenses as it is not result reducing the labor required. The integration of update features
required for small teams with a limited budget. Overall, the when the team reaches certain milestones the stakeholders can ensure
Extreme Programming method requires lots of effort, persistence, and customer involvement throughout the process. Furthermore, the AI
patience as tight deadlines are required to be accomplished every day. system can also provide simple explanations, documentation, and
On the other hand, Lean Software Development focuses on the visual instructions to the customers, project managers, and other
project management aspects of a project and specifies no technical programmers which makes the process of transferring from one stage
practices; it integrates well with other agile methodologies, such as of the development process to another process. This can be done
XP, that focus more on the technical aspects of software development through a LLM-based AI called Sora AI. Depending on the workflow
[7]. A major challenge faced here is that it involves comprehensive of the ongoing project, the AI can also estimate the time required to
and precise information at every stage that results in documenting and complete the project based on the requirements input into the model
recording every stage diligently which is hard to keep track of. generating the test code. We can implement Generative AI models
Secondly, the prime objective is to eliminate waste and optimize the likewise to other agile process models like LSD to reduce the
entire process to achieve the maximum possible gain [8]. It doesn’t workload on programmers, make the process time-efficient,
encourage the idea of heavy documentation and usage of diagrams so minimizing the number of iterations needed all while keeping the
this process of elimination takes up a huge amount of time and energy stakeholders in the loop. This eliminates waste, optimizes the project
resulting in slow development. Lean Software Development to deliver the best, and makes it easier for team members to work
encourages flexibility of ideas from customers, but this leads to issues with code while making it easier to scale without inciting conflict
and challenges that create complexity and loss of originality. Lastly, among the team members. The project is well-documented and tested
Lean Software Development heavily relies on the team members. If at each stage. Thus, as a result, making the agile software
the team is found inconsistent with their skills, this inability leads to development and management process emphasizes the principles that
inefficiency and affects the overall productivity. The conditions are it is laid upon while minimizing the cons involved in the process.
thus similar to the Traditional Software Development Methods.
Integration of Artificial Intelligence Algorithms in Agile Software
METHODOLOGY Development Lifecycle: The agile development life cycle consists of
five major phases: Initiation, planning, execution, monitoring &
control, and closing [13]. This section proposes to utilize AI
Enhancing Agile Development Through Generative Artificial algorithms to automate and enhance the Agile SDLC. As the adoption
Intelligence: The above obstacles in Agile Software Development of Generalized AI becomes more prevalent throughout various
present serious issues in the efficiency and product development
66407 International Journal of Development Research, Vol. 14, Issue, 08, pp. 66405-66408, August,
August 2024

industries, as highlighted by [14], problems in the domain of software The usage of AI can help developers evade inefficient code
development can be solved utilizing existing intelligent algorithms. practices by utilizing patterns from historic data[16] and help
This can be achieved by translating the agile process to the space of generate test cases.
machine learning effectively connecting problems with existing
solutions[15]. The first phase initiation can utilize supervised machine b. Risk Assessment: Predictive AI algorithms can be used to
learning to predict the project success rate based on resources, efforts, identify potential risks and issues before they escalate,
cost, and other critical factors. The second phase i.e. planning can allowing teams to implement mitigation strategies
leverage supervised machine learning to assign tasks to tea team preemptively [17].
members based on the previous performance data. The third and c. Continuous Integration and Deployment: AI can be used in
fourth stages closely relate to tasks that can leverage generative AI the optimization of product deployment leading to minimal
capabilities as discussed in the above and below sections in great deployment-related
related issues[18].
issues[1
detail. Tasks like report generation, data analysis
analysis, and automation
would come under these phases. Use cases of AI in Lean Software Development (LSD):

a. Process Optimization: AI can provide valuable insights and

iterative advice to streamline workflow and prevent
redundant effort. By the use of specific Machine Learning
models, we can predict when systems or tools are likely to
fail and halt the development process. Using such a method
allows us to take appropriate measures to prevent any system
failure that could halt the development process [19].
b. Performance Monitoring: AI can continuously analyze and
track system performance and user interactions. By
monitoring this data, AI can provide necessary
improvements that can help the development teams deliver
the best quality software consistently.
c. Quality Assurance: Through the use of AI-powered
AI tools,
the quality of the code can be managed. Such tools can
continuously analyze the code and assess it for possible
vulnerabilities, hence reducing the risk of failure.

CONCLUSION
Our research indicates that the current software development life
cycle for agile processes can be further enhanced through the usage
of artificial intelligence. This can potentially help companies save
time, reduce production costs, mitigate riskr factors, and assist in
decision-making.
making. Our research indicates a lack of effectiveness in
existing agile applications and mentioned numerous approaches to
integrate artificial intelligence (AI) into an agile development life
cycle which, as discussed, offers better decision-making,
decision automation
of routine tasks, and risk analysis that directly impact the overall
success of the project.

Figure 1: Integration of AI into Agile Software Development

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