Chapter 3 – Agile Software Development

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Topics covered

 Agile methods
 Agile development techniques
 Agile project management
 Scaling agile methods

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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

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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

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Plan-driven and agile development

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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.

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 Agile methods

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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.

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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.

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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.

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 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.
 Because of their focus on small, tightly-integrated teams,
there are problems in scaling agile methods to large
systems.

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 Agile development techniques

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Extreme programming

 A very influential agile method, developed in the late

1990s, 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.

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The extreme programming release cycle

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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.
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Extreme programming practices (b)

Principle or practice Description

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.
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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.

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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.

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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.
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 Agile project management

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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.

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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.

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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 The software increment that is delivered from a sprint. The idea is that this
product increment 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.
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 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.

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Scrum sprint cycle

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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 Scaling agile methods

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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.

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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.

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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.
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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.

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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.

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Agile principles and organizational practice

Principle 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.

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Agile principles and organizational practice

Principle 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.

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Agile and plan-based factors

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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.
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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.

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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?

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 Thank You

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