Agile Software Development

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

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 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.

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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
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.
• 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.
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 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.

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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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 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.

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The extreme programming release cycle

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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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 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.
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A ‘prescribing medication’ story

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Examples of task cards for prescribing
medication

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 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.
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 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.

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 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.

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 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.

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 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.
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 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.
•
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The Scrum process

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 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.
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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 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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 Summary
• 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.

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 Summary
• 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.
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