AGILE DEVELOPMENT

BY: HIRA SHAHID

Lecturer, University of Central Punjab, Pakistan
WHAT IS AGILE ??
AGILE

• 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.
❑ 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 AGILE MANIFESTO

• The Agile Manifesto is based on twelve principles

• Customer satisfaction by early and continuous delivery of valuable software
• Welcome changing requirements, even in late development
• Working software is delivered frequently (weeks rather than months)
• Close, daily cooperation between business people and developers
• Projects are built around motivated individuals, who should be trusted
• Face-to-face conversation is the best form of communication (co-location)
AGILE MANIFESTO (CONT.)

• Working software is the principal measure of progress

• Sustainable development, able to maintain a constant pace
• Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design
• Simplicity—the art of maximizing the amount of work not done—is
essential
• Self-organizing teams
• Regular adaptation to changing circumstance
AGILE SOFTWARE MANIFESTO
AGILE PRACTICES

• The key point is that agile approaches plan features, not tasks, as the first
priority because features are what customers understand.
 AGILITY

• Agility ultimately is about creating and responding to change

• Effective (rapid and adaptive) response to change
(team members, new technology, requirements)
• Effective communication
• Drawing the customer into the team
 THE PRINCIPLES OF AGILE METHODS

Principle 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.
TECHNICAL, HUMAN, ORGANIZATIONAL ISSUES

• 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

• Are systems that are developed using an agile approach maintainable, given the emphasis in the
development process of minimizing formal documentation?

• Scaling agile methods for large systems is difficult. Large systems need up-front design
and some documentation

• Problems may arise if original development team cannot be maintained

TECHNICAL, HUMAN, ORGANIZATIONAL ISSUES

❑ 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.

❑What is the expected system lifetime?

❑ Long-lifetime systems may require more design documentation to communicate the original
intentions of the system developers to the support team.

❑How is the development team organized?

❑ If the development team is distributed or if part of the development is being outsourced,
then you may need to develop design documents to communicate across the development
teams.
EXTREME
PROGRAMMING
EXTREME PROGRAMMING

❑ 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.
 XP AND AGILE PRINCIPLES

❑ Incremental development
❑ supported through small, frequent system releases.
❑ People not process
❑ Pair programming, collective ownership and a process that avoids long
working hours.
❑ Customer involvement means full-time customer engagement with the team.
❑ Change
❑ supported through regular system releases.
❑ Maintaining simplicity
❑ through constant refactoring of code.
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’.
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.
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.
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
 REQUIREMENTS SCENARIOS

❑ 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 scenarios or user stories.

❑ 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.
XP AND CHANGE

❑ 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.
 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.
TESTING IN XP

❑ 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 are used to run all component tests each time
that a new release is built.
TEST-FIRST DEVELOPMENT

❑ Writing tests before code clarifies the requirements to be

implemented.
❑ Tests are written as programs 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 when new functionality is added,
thus checking that the new functionality has not introduced errors.
PAIR PROGRAMMING

❑ In pair programming, programmers sit together at the same

workstation to develop the software.
❑ 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.
❑ Pairs are created dynamically so that all team members work with
each other during the development process.
PAIR PROGRAMMING

❑ 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 evidence that a pair working together is more efficient
than 2 programmers working separately.
AGILE PROJECT MANAGEMENT

❑ The principal responsibility of software project managers

❑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 particular strengths of agile
methods.
SCRUM

❑ The Scrum approach is a general agile method that focus is on managing

iterative development.
❑ 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 user manuals and assesses the
lessons learned from the project.
Silent features of Scrum

•Scrum is a light-weighted framework

•Scrum emphasizes self-organization

•Scrum is simple to understand

•Scrum framework helps the team to work together

•Lifecycle of Scrum
•Sprint: A Sprint is a time box of one month or less. A new Sprint starts
immediately after the completion of the previous Sprint. Release: When
the product is completed, it goes to the Release stage.
•Sprint Review: If the product still has some non-achievable features, it
will be checked in this stage and then passed to the Sprint Retrospective
stage.
•Sprint Retrospective: In this stage quality or status of the product is
checked. Product Backlog: According to the prioritize features the product
is organized.
•Sprint Backlog: Sprint Backlog is divided into two parts Product assigned
features to sprint and Sprint planning meeting.
SCRUM ROLES

❑ Product owner
❑ ensures that the team delivers value to the business. The Product Owner writes customer-centric
items (typically user stories), ranks and prioritizes them, and adds them to the product backlog.

❑ Scrum master
❑ protects the development team from external distractions.
❑ 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.

❑ Development team
❑ Consists of 3 to 9 software engineers from cross functional area
❑ Include architects, programmers, analysts, QA experts, testers, and UI designers.