... What is Agile Method Resources ...

Agile software development - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia | Agile software development is a group of software development methods based on iterative and incremental development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams. It promotes adaptive planning, evolutionary development and delivery, a time-boxed iterative approach, and encourages rapid and flexible response to change. It is a conceptual framework that promotes foreseen tight interactions throughout the development cycle. The Agile Manifesto[1] introduced the term in 2001. Since then, the Agile Movement, with all its values, principles, methods, practices, tools, champions and practitioners, philosophies and cultures, has significantly changed the landscape of the modern software engineering and commercial software development in the Internet times. The Agile Manifesto[edit] In February 2001, 17 software developers (see below) met at the Snowbird, Utah resort, to discuss lightweight development methods. They published the Manifesto for Agile Software Development[1] to define the approach now known as agile software development. Some of the manifesto's authors formed the Agile Alliance, a non-profit organization that promotes software development according to the manifesto's values and principles. The well-known background picture of the Agile Manifesto website was taken by Ward Cunningham, who wanted to capture the moment during the weekend meeting at Snowbird.[6] Agile values[edit] The Agile Manifesto reads, in its entirety, as follows: 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 The meanings of the manifesto items on the left within the agile software development context are: Individuals and interactions – in agile development, self-organization and motivation are important, as are interactions like co-location and pair programming. Working software – working software will be more useful and welcome than just presenting documents to clients in meetings. Customer collaboration – requirements cannot be fully collected at the beginning of the software development cycle, therefore continuous customer or stakeholder involvement is very important. Responding to change – agile development is focused on quick responses to change and continuous development.[7] Agile principles[edit] The Agile Manifesto is based on twelve principles:[8] Customer satisfaction by rapid delivery of useful software Welcome changing requirements, even late in development Working software is delivered frequently (weeks rather than months) Working software is the principal measure of progress Sustainable development, able to maintain a constant pace Close, daily cooperation between business people and developers Face-to-face conversation is the best form of communication (co-location) Projects are built around motivated individuals, who should be trusted 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 circumstances Overview[edit] This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2012) Pair programming, an agile development technique used by XP. Note information radiators in the background. There are many specific agile development methods. Most promote development, teamwork, collaboration, and process adaptability throughout the life-cycle of the project. Iterative, incremental and evolutionary Agile methods break tasks into small increments with minimal planning and do not directly involve long-term planning. Iterations are short time frames (timeboxes) that typically last from one to four weeks. Each iteration involves a cross-functional team working in all functions: planning, requirements analysis, design, coding, unit testing, and acceptance testing. At the end of the iteration a working product is demonstrated to stakeholders. This minimizes overall risk and allows the project to adapt to changes quickly. An iteration might not add enough functionality to warrant a market release, but the goal is to have an available release (with minimal bugs) at the end of each iteration.[10] Multiple iterations might be required to release a product or new features. Efficient and face-to-face communication No matter what development disciplines are required, each agile team will contain a customer representative, e.g. Product Owner in Scrum. This person is appointed by stakeholders to act on their behalf[11] and makes a personal commitment to being available for developers to answer mid-iteration questions. At the end of each iteration, stakeholders and the customer representative review progress and re-evaluate priorities with a view to optimizing the return on investment (ROI) and ensuring alignment with customer needs and company goals. In agile software development, an information radiator is a (normally large) physical display located prominently in an office, where passers-by can see it. It presents an up-to-date summary of the status of a software project or other product.[12][13] The name was coined by Alistair Cockburn, and described in his 2002 book Agile Software Development.[13] A build light indicator may be used to inform a team about the current status of their project. Very short feedback loop and adaptation cycle A common characteristic of agile development are daily status meetings or "stand-ups", e.g. Daily Scrum (Meeting). In a brief session, team members report to each other what they did the previous day, what they intend to do today, and what their roadblocks are. Quality focus Specific tools and techniques, such as continuous integration, automated unit testing, pair programming, test-driven development, design patterns, domain-driven design, code refactoring and other techniques are often used to improve quality and enhance project agility. Philosophy[edit] Comparing with traditional software engineering, agile development is mainly targeted at complex systems and projects with dynamic, undeterministic and non-linear characteristics, where accurate estimates, stable plans and predictions are often hard to get in early stages, and big up-front designs and arrangements will probably cause a lot of waste, i.e. not economically sound. These basic arguments and precious industry experiences learned from years of successes and failures have helped shaping Agile's favor of adaptive, iterative and evolutionary development.[5] Adaptive vs. Predictive[edit] Development methods exist on a continuum from adaptive to predictive.[14] Agile methods lie on the adaptive side of this continuum. One key of adaptive development methods is a "Rolling Wave" approach to schedule planning, which identifies milestones but leaves flexibility in the path to reach them, and also allows for the milestones themselves to change.[15] Adaptive methods focus on adapting quickly to changing realities. When the needs of a project change, an adaptive team changes as well. An adaptive team will have difficulty describing exactly what will happen in the future. The further away a date is, the more vague an adaptive method will be about what will happen on that date. An adaptive team cannot report exactly what tasks they will do next week, but only which features they plan for next month. When asked about a release six months from now, an adaptive team might be able to report only the mission statement for the release, or a statement of expected value vs. cost. Predictive methods, in contrast, focus on analysing and planning the future in detail and cater for known risks. In the extremes, a predictive team can report exactly what features and tasks are planned for the entire length of the development process. Predictive methods rely on effective early phase analysis and if this goes very wrong, the project may have difficulty changing direction. Predictive teams will often institute a Change Control Board to ensure that only the most valuable changes are considered. Risk analysis can be used to choose between adaptive (agile or value-driven) and predictive (plan-driven) methods.[16] Barry Boehm and Richard Turner suggest that each side of the continuum has its own home ground, as follows:[17] Home grounds of different development methods Agile methods Plan-driven methods Formal methods Low criticality High criticality Extreme criticality Iterative vs. Waterfall[edit] One of the differences between agile and waterfall is that testing of the software is conducted at different stages during the software development lifecycle. In the Waterfall model, there is always a separate testing phase near the completion of a implementation phase. However, in Agile and especially Extreme programming, testing is usually done concurrently with coding, or at least, testing jobs start in early iterations. Codes vs. Documentation[edit] At first sight, agile development methodologies might seem to reject documentation. One of the key statements of the Agile Manifesto is Working software over Comprehensive documentation. This has led Steven Rakitin to attack agile development as "yet another attempt to undermine the discipline of software engineering".[18] He continues to translate above statement: "We want to spend all our time coding. Remember, real programmers don’t write documentation." Yet a more thorough look reveals that this interpretation is over-simplified. Agitating against all kinds of documentation is not what the Agile Manifesto intended. Instead, it wants to say that working software will be more useful and welcome than just presenting documents to clients in meetings. (see above) And indeed, a survey among software engineering experts found that documentation is by no means regarded as unnecessary or waste. More than that, a lacking of documentation of various forms is seen as a major problem. In this respect, agile development is no different from other software development methodology.[19] Agile methods[edit] Well-known agile software development methods and/or process frameworks include: Adaptive Software Development (ASD) Agile Unified Process (AUP) Crystal Methods (Crystal Clear) Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM) Extreme Programming (XP) Feature Driven Development (FDD) Kanban Lean software development Scrum Scrum-ban Software development life-cycle support[20] The agile methods are focused on different aspects of the Software development life cycle. Some focus on the practices (e.g. XP, Pragmatic Programming, Agile Modeling), while others focus on managing the software projects (e.g. Scrum). Yet, there are approaches providing full coverage over the development life cycle (e.g. DSDM, IBM RUP), while most of them are suitable from the requirements specification phase on (FDD, for example). Thus, there is a clear difference between the various agile methods in this regard.[20] Agile practices[edit] Agile development is supported by a bundle of concrete practices suggested by the agile methods, covering areas like requirements, design, modeling, coding, testing, project management, process, quality, etc. Some notable agile practices include: Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD) Agile Modeling Backlogs (Product and Sprint) Behavior-driven development (BDD) Cross-functional team Continuous integration (CI) Domain-driven design (DDD) Information radiators (Scrum board, Kanban board, Task board, Burndown chart) Iterative and incremental development (IID) Pair programming Planning poker Refactoring Scrum meetings (Sprint planning, Daily scrum, Sprint review and retrospective) Test-driven development (TDD) Agile testing Timeboxing Use case User story Story-driven modeling Velocity tracking The Agile Alliance has provided a comprehensive online collection with a map guide to the applying agile practices.[21] Method tailoring[edit] In the literature, different terms refer to the notion of method adaptation, including 'method tailoring', 'method fragment adaptation' and 'situational method engineering'. Method tailoring is defined as: A process or capability in which human agents determine a system development approach for a specific project situation through responsive changes in, and dynamic interplays between contexts, intentions, and method fragments.[22] Potentially, almost all agile methods are suitable for method tailoring. Even the DSDM method is being used for this purpose and has been successfully tailored in a CMM context.[23] Situation-appropriateness can be considered as a distinguishing characteristic between agile methods and traditional software development methods, with the latter being relatively much more rigid and prescriptive. The practical implication is that agile methods allow project teams to adapt working practices according to the needs of individual projects. Practices are concrete activities and products that are part of a method framework. At a more extreme level, the philosophy behind the method, consisting of a number of principles, could be adapted (Aydin, 2004).[22] Extreme Programming (XP) makes the need for method adaptation explicit. One of the fundamental ideas of XP is that no one process fits every project, but rather that practices should be tailored to the needs of individual projects. Partial adoption of XP practices, as suggested by Beck, has been reported on several occasions.[20] Mehdi Mirakhorli proposes a tailoring practice that provides a sufficient road-map and guidelines for adapting all the practices. RDP Practice is designed for customizing XP. This practice, first proposed as a long research paper in the APSO workshop at the ICSE 2008 conference, is currently the only proposed and applicable method for customizing XP. Although it is specifically a solution for XP, this practice has the capability of extending to other methodologies. At first glance, this practice seems to be in the category of static method adaptation but experiences with RDP Practice says that it can be treated like dynamic method adaptation. The distinction between static method adaptation and dynamic method adaptation is subtle.[24] Comparison with other methods[edit] This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2010) RAD Agile methods have much in common with the Rapid Application Development techniques from the 1980/90s as espoused by James Martin and others.[citation needed] In addition to technology-focused methods, customer-and-design-centered methods, such as Visualization-Driven Rapid Prototyping developed by Brian Willison, work to engage customers and end users to facilitate agile software development.[citation needed] CMMI In 2008 the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) published the technical report "CMMI or Agile: Why Not Embrace Both"[25] to make clear that the Capability Maturity Model Integration and Agile can co-exist. Modern CMMI-compatible development processes are also iterative. The CMMI Version 1.3 includes tips for implementing Agile and CMMI process improvement together.[26] Measuring agility[edit] While agility can be seen as a means to an end, a number of approaches have been proposed to quantify agility. Agility Index Measurements (AIM)[27] score projects against a number of agility factors to achieve a total. The similarly named Agility Measurement Index,[28] scores developments against five dimensions of a software project (duration, risk, novelty, effort, and interaction). Other techniques are based on measurable goals.[29] Another study using fuzzy mathematics[30] has suggested that project velocity can be used as a metric of agility. There are agile self-assessments to determine whether a team is using agile practices (Nokia test,[31] Karlskrona test,[32] 42 points test[33]). While such approaches have been proposed to measure agility, the practical application of such metrics is still debated. There is agile software development ROI data available from the CSIAC ROI Dashboard.[34] Large-scale and distributed Agile[edit] Large-scale agile software development remains an active research area.[38][39] Agile development has been widely seen as being more suitable for certain types of environment, including small teams of experts.[17][40]:157 Positive reception towards Agile methods has been observed in Embedded domain across Europe in recent years.[41] Some things that may negatively impact the success of an agile project are: Large-scale development efforts (>20 developers), though scaling strategies[39] and evidence of some large projects[42] have been described. Distributed development efforts (non-colocated teams). Strategies have been described in Bridging the Distance[43] and Using an Agile Software Process with Offshore Development.[44] Forcing an agile process on a development team.[45] Mission-critical systems where failure is not an option at any cost (e.g. software for avionics). The early successes, challenges and limitations encountered in the adoption of agile methods in a large organization have been documented.[46] Agile offshore[edit] In terms of outsourcing agile development, Michael Hackett, Sr. Vice President of LogiGear Corporation has stated that "the offshore team ... should have expertise, experience, good communication skills, inter-cultural understanding, trust and understanding between members and groups and with each other."[47] >> Learn more >> Agile Software Development: A gentle introduction. www.agile-process.org What is Agile software Development? I explain agile with one dozen words: Iterative planning, honest plans, project heartbeat, working software, team empowerment, and ... Computer science is a young science. Computer programmers my age were trained by engineers. That training dictated how we approached software development for an entire generation. But now after decades of building software to be expensive, unwanted, and unreliable we have come to realize software is different. Building software is more like creating a work of art, it requires creativity in design and ample craftsmanship to complete. Software remains malleable, often illogical, and incomplete forever. Agile software development is based on fundamental changes to what we considered essential to software development ten years ago. The most important thing to know about Agile methods or processes is that there is no such thing. There are only Agile teams. The processes we describe as Agile are environments for a team to learn how to be Agile. Perhaps the biggest problem with software development is changing requirements. Agile processes accept the reality of change versus the hunt for complete, rigid specifications. There are domains where requirements can't change, but most projects have changing requirements. For most projects readily accepting changes can actually cost less than ensuring requirements will never change. Agile also means a fundamental change in how we manage our projects. If working software is what you will deliver then measure your progress by how much you have right now. We will change our management style to be based on getting working software done a little at a time. The documents we used to create as project milestones may still be useful, just not as a measure of progress. http://www.agile-process.org/ Agile Processes and Methodologies: A Conceptual Study www.enggjournals.com/…cse/doc/IJCSE12-04-05-186.pdf basically based on incremental software development process. In scrum method the entire development cycle is Agile Processes and Methodologies: A Conceptual Study - Abstract— This paper deals with the comparative study of agile processes. The paper will serve as guide to other software development process models. Agile processes have important applications in the areas of software project management, software schedule management, etc. In particular the aim of agile processes is to satisfy the customer, faster development times with lower defects rate. This paper compares the agile processes with other software development life cycle models. Agile processes are not always advantageous, they have some drawbacks as well; the advantages and disadvantages of agile processes are also discussed in this paper. Keywords: Agile Development, Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). I. INTRODUCTION In software development life cycle, there are two main considerations, one is to emphasize on process and the other is the quality of the software and process itself. Agile software processes is an iterative and incremental based development, where requirements are changeable according to customer needs. It helps in adaptive planning, iterative development and time boxing. It is a theoretical framework that promotes foreseen interactions throughout the development cycle. There are several SDLC models like spiral, waterfall, RAD which has their own advantages. SDLC is a framework that describes the activities performed at each stage of a software development life cycle[1]. The software development activities such as planning, analysis, design, coding, testing and maintenance which need to be performed according to the demand of the customer. It depends on the various applications to choose the specific model. In this paper, however, we will study the agile processes and its methodologies. Agile process is itself a software development process[2]. Agile process is an iterative approach in which customer satisfaction is at highest priority as the customer has direct involvement in evaluating the software[3]. The agile process follows the software development life cycle which includes requirements gathering, analysis, design , coding , testing and delivers partially implemented software and waits for the customer feedback. In the whole process , customer satisfaction is at highest priority with faster development time. http://www.enggjournals.com/ijcse/doc/IJCSE12-04-05-186.pdf

W3C Agile | What is Agile? Agile is the publishing language of the World Wide Web. Share: News and Opinions about Agile >> Learn more >>

... How To Agile Method Resources.

> Agile is a widely-used general-purpose scripting language that is >> Learn more >>

Don't see the one your looking for? Let us know! Got Agile Method Resources yourself? Lets add it to the Agile Method Resource NetWork!

Let us know:

... yours Today!

Learn more > about the Resource Network, or about Us ...

the Bulletin Board

INSTRUCTIONS Enter questions, comments and link info in the NotePad, NOTE - we do NOT automatically capture e-mail address - you must enter it.   EDITing is up to you, what you submit is what gets posted.   To request further maintenance -or- for more private communications, use the FeedBack form below.   Post Here   Who are you: Where are you from: What would you like to say: