Agile Software Development

Outline
Agile methods Plan-driven and agile development Extreme programming Agile project management Scaling agile methods

Rapid software development

Why rapid software development
Requirements change or requirements problems are discovered only have a short time to redo and retest the system A complete set of requirements at the beginning of the project is almost impossible Software has to evolve quickly to reflect changing business needs.

Characteristics of rapid software development

Specification, design and implementation are inter-leaved System is developed as a series of versions with stakeholders involved in version evaluation User interfaces are often developed using an interactive development system and graphical toolset.
3

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 the software 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.

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.
5

The principles of agile methods

Principle Customer involvement Description 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. The software is developed in increments with the customer specifying the requirements to be included in each increment. 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. Expect the system requirements to change and so design the system to accommodate these changes. Focus on simplicity in both the software being developed and the development process. Wherever possible, actively work to eliminate complexity from the system.
6

Incremental delivery

People not process

Embrace change Maintain simplicity

Agile method applicability

Product development where a software company is developing a small or medium-sized product for sale. 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 not a lot of 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.

Problems with agile methods

It can be difficult to keep the interest of customers who are involved in the process. Team members may be unsuited to the intense involvement that characterizes agile methods. Prioritizing changes can be difficult where there are multiple stakeholders. Maintaining simplicity requires extra work. It is difficult for large companies to move to a working model in which processes are informal and defined by development teams.

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.

9

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 interleaved and the outputs from the development process are decided through a process of negotiation during the software development process.
10

Plan-driven and agile specification

11

Technical, human, organizational issues

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 plandriven approach may have to be used.
12

Technical, human, organizational issues

What type of system is being developed?
Plan-driven approaches may be required for systems that require a lot of analysis before implementation (e.g. real-time system with complex timing requirements).

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.

What technologies are available to support system development?

Agile methods rely on good tools to keep track of an evolving design

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.
13

Technical, human, organizational issues

Are there cultural or organizational issues that may affect the system development?
Traditional engineering organizations have a culture of planbased development, as this is the norm in engineering.

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

Is the system subject to external regulation?

If a system has to be approved by an external regulator (e.g. the FAA approve software that is critical to the operation of an aircraft) then you will probably be required to produce detailed documentation as part of the system safety case.
14

Extreme programming
Perhaps the best-known and most widely used agile method. 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.
15

The extreme programming release cycle

16

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.

17

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.

18

A prescribing medication story

19

Examples of task cards for prescribing medication

20

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.
21

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. However, some changes requires architecture refactoring and this is much more expensive.
22

Examples of refactoring
Re-organization of a class hierarchy to remove duplicate code. Tidying up and renaming attributes and methods to make them easier to understand. The replacement of inline code with calls to methods that have been included in a program library.

23

Pair programming
In XP, programmers work in pairs, sitting together to develop code. 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 this. Measurements suggest that development productivity with pair programming is similar to that of two people working independently.

24

Advantages of pair programming

It supports the idea of collective ownership and responsibility for the system.
Individuals are not held responsible for problems with the code. Instead, the team has collective responsibility for resolving these problems.

It acts as an informal review process because each line of code is looked at by at least two people. It helps support refactoring, which is a process of software improvement.
Where pair programming and collective ownership are used, others benefit immediately from the refactoring so they are likely to support the process.

25

Scrum
The Scrum approach is a general agile method but its focus is 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.

26

The Scrum process

27

The Sprint cycle

Sprints are fixed length, normally 2 4 weeks. They correspond to the development of a release of the system in XP. 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 to be developed during the sprint.
28

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.
29

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 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.

30

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.
31

Key points
Agile methods are incremental development methods that focus on rapid development, frequent releases of the software, reducing process overheads and producing high-quality code. They involve the customer directly in the development process. The decision on whether to use an agile or a plan-driven approach to development should depend on the type of software being developed, the capabilities of the development team and the culture of the company developing the system. Extreme programming is a well-known agile method that integrates a range of good programming practices such as frequent releases of the software, continuous software improvement and customer participation in the development team.

32

Key points
A particular strength of extreme programming is the development of automated tests before a program feature is created. All tests must successfully execute when an increment is integrated into a system. The Scrum method is an agile method that provides a project management framework. It is centred round a set of sprints, which are fixed time periods when a system increment is developed.
33