Integrated Approach to

Software Engineering

Agile Software development

Dr Annushree Bablani
Introduction

● Agile methods were developed in an effort to overcome perceived

and actual weaknesses in conventional software engineering.
● Agile development can provide important benefits, but it is not
applicable to all projects, all products, all people, and all situations.
● Market conditions change rapidly, end-user needs evolve, and new
competitive threats emerge without warning.
● You must be agile enough to respond to a fluid business
environment.
● Ability to reduce the costs of change throughout the software
process
What is Agility?

● Effective (rapid and adaptive) response to change

● Effective communication among all stakeholders
● Drawing the customer onto the team
● Organizing a team so that it is in control of the work
performed

Yielding …

● Rapid, incremental delivery of software

Agility and the Cost of Change!
An Agile Process

● Is driven by customer descriptions of what is required

(scenarios)
● Recognizes that plans are short-lived
● Develops software iteratively with a heavy emphasis on
construction activities
● Delivers multiple ʻsoftware incrementsʼ
● Adapts as changes occur
Agility Principles

1. Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery
of valuable software.

2. Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness

change for the customer’s competitive advantage.

3. Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months,

with a preference to the shorter timescale.

4. Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.

5. Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support
they need, and trust them to get the job done.

6. The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a
development team is face-to-face conversation.
Agility Principles

7. Working software is the primary measure of progress.

8. Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers,

and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.

9. Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances

agility.

10. Simplicity—the art of maximizing the amount of work not done—is essential.

11. The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self–
organizing teams.

12. At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective,
then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.
Human Factors

● The process molds to the needs of the people and team,

not the other way around.
● Key traits must exist among the people on an agile team
and the team itself:
○ Competence.
○ Common focus.
○ Collaboration.
○ Decision-making ability.
○ Fuzzy problem-solving ability.
○ Mutual trust and respect.
○ Self-organization.
Extreme Programming (XP)

● The most widely used agile process, originally proposed

by Kent Beck
● XP values
○ Communication
○ Simplicity
○ Feedback
○ Courage (Discipline)
○ Respect
Extreme Programming (XP)
● Feedback is derived from three sources: the implemented software
itself, the customer, and other software team members.
○ By designing and implementing an effective testing strategy the software (via test
results) provides the agile team with feedback.
● XP makes use of the unit test as its primary testing tactic.
○ As each class is developed, the team develops a unit test to exercise each
operation according to its specified functionality.
● As an increment is delivered to a customer, the user stories or use
cases that are implemented by the increment are used as a basis for
acceptance tests.
○ The degree to which the software implements the output, function, and behavior
of the use case is a form of feedback.
● Finally, as new requirements are derived as part of iterative planning,
the team provides the customer with rapid feedback regarding cost
and schedule impact.
The XP Process
The XP Process

● XP Planning
○ Begins with the creation of “user stories”
○ Agile team assesses each story and assigns a cost
○ Stories are grouped to for a deliverable increment
○ A commitment is made on delivery date
○ After the first increment “project velocity” is used to help define
subsequent delivery dates for other increments
The XP Process

● XP Design
○ Follows the KIS principle
○ Encourage the use of CRC cards (class-responsibility collaborator)
(will discuss later)
○ For difficult design problems, suggests the creation of “spike
solutions”—a design prototype
○ Encourages “refactoring”—an iterative refinement of the internal
program design
■ Refactoring is the process of changing a software system in such a
way that it does not alter the external behavior of the code yet
improves the internal structure
The XP Process

● XP Coding
○ Recommends the construction of a unit test for a story before
coding commences
○ Encourages “pair programming”
● XP Testing
○ All unit tests are executed daily
○ “Acceptance tests” are defined by the customer and executed to
assess customer visible functionality
■ “Fixing small problems every few hours takes less time than fixing
huge problems just before the deadline.”
Industrial XP

Joshua Kerievsky [Ker05] describes Industrial Extreme

Programming (IXP) in the following manner: “IXP is an organic
evolution of XP. It is imbued with XP’s minimalist,
customer-centric, test-driven spirit. IXP differs most from the
original XP in its greater inclusion of management, its expanded
role for customers, and its upgraded technical practices.”
Industrial XP

IXP incorporates six new practices

1. Readiness assessment
2. Project community
3. Project chartering
4. Test-driven management
5. Retrospectives
6. Continuous learning
For further knowledge on IXP, visit http://industrialxp.org.
OTHER AGILE PROCESS MODELS

● Adaptive Software Development (ASD)

● Scrum
● Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM)
● Crystal
● Feature Drive Development (FDD)
● Lean Software Development (LSD)
● Agile Modeling (AM)
● Agile Unified Process (AUP)
Adaptive Software Development (ASD)

● Originally proposed by Jim Highsmith

● ASD — distinguishing features:
○ Mission-driven planning
○ Component-based focus
○ Uses “time-boxing”
○ Explicit consideration of risk
○ Emphasizes collaboration for requirements gathering
○ Emphasizes “learning” throughout the process
Adaptive Software Development (ASD)
Dynamic Systems Development Method
● Promoted by the DSDM Consortium (www.dsdm.org
● DSDM—distinguishing features
○ Similar in most respects to XP and/or ASD
○ Nine guiding principles
■ Active user involvement is imperative.
■ DSDM teams must be empowered to make decisions
■ The focus is on frequent delivery of products.
■ Fitness for business purpose is the essential criterion for
acceptance of deliverables.
■ Iterative and incremental development is necessary to
converge on an accurate business solution.
■ All changes during development are reversible.
■ Requirements are baselined at a high level
■ Testing is integrated throughout the life-cycle.
Scrum

● Originally proposed by Schwaber and Beedle

● Scrum—distinguishing features:
○ Development work is partitioned into “packets”
○ Testing and documentation are on-going as the product is
constructed
○ Work occurs in “sprints” and is derived from a “backlog” of existing
requirements
○ Meetings are very short and sometimes conducted without chairs
○ “demos” are delivered to the customer with the timebox allocated
Crystal

● Proposed by Cockburn and Highsmith

● Crystal—distinguishing features
○ Actually a family of process models that allow “maneuverability”
based on problem characteristics
○ Face-to-face communication is emphasized
○ Suggests the use of “reflection workshops” to review the work
habits of the team
Feature Driven Development
● Originally proposed by Peter Coad et al
● FDD—distinguishing features
○ Emphasis is on defining “features”
■ a feature “is a client-valued function that can be implemented in
two weeks or less.”
○ Uses a feature template
■ <action> the <result> <by | for | of | to> a(n) <object>
■ Examples of features for an e-commerce application might be:
● Add the product to shopping cart
● Display the technical-specifications of the product
● Store the shipping-information for the customer
○ A features list is created and “plan by feature” is conducted
○ Design and construction merge in FDD
Agile Modeling

● Originally proposed by Scott Ambler

● Suggests a set of agile modeling principles
○ Model with a purpose
○ Use multiple models
○ Travel light
○ Content is more important than representation
○ Know the models and the tools you use to create them
○ Adapt locally
Lean Software Development

The lean principles can be summarized as

● eliminate waste
● build quality in
● create knowledge
● defer commitment
● deliver fast
● respect people
● optimize the whole
Agile Unified Process (AUP)

● The Agile Unified Process (AUP) adopts a “serial in the

large” and “iterative in the small” philosophy for building
computer-based systems.
● Each AUP iteration addresses the following activities
○ Modeling
○ Implementation
○ Testing
○ Deployment
○ Configuration and project management
○ Environment management