Chapter 3 – Agile Software Development
Dr. Ola Surakhi
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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 sta
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 tim
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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 spec
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 o
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
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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
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)
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Agile manifesto
We are uncovering better ways of developing ■software by doing it and helping others do it. ■Through th
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools■Working software over comprehensive documenta
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
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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 custome
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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
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)
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Extreme programming practices (b)
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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 worki
Change supported through regular system releases.
Maintaining simplicity through constant refactoring of code.
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Influential XP practices
Extreme programming has a technical focus and is not easy to integrate with management practice in mo
Consequently, while agile development uses practices from XP, the method as originally defined is not wi
Key practices
User stories for specification
Refactoring
Test-first development
Pair programming
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User stories for requirements
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 user stories or scenarios.
These are written on cards and the development team break them down into implementation tasks. These
The customer chooses the stories for inclusion in the next release based on their priorities and the sched
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A ‘prescribing medication’ story
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Examples of task cards for prescribing medication
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Refactoring
Conventional wisdom in software engineering is to design for change. It is worth spending time and effort
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 b
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Refactoring
Programming team look for possible software improvements and make these improvements even where
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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Test-first development
Testing is central to XP and XP has developed an approach where the program is tested after every chan
XP testing features:
Test-first development.
Incremental test development from scenarios.
User involvement in test development and validation.
Automated test harnesses are used to run all component tests each time that a new release is built.
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Test-driven development
Writing tests before code clarifies the requirements to be implemented.
Tests are written as programs rather than data so that they can be executed automatically. The test includ
Usually relies on a testing framework such as Junit.
All previous and new tests are run automatically when new functionality is added, thus checking that the n
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Customer involvement
The role of the customer in the testing process is to help develop acceptance tests for the stories that are
The customer who is part of the team writes tests as development proceeds. All new code is therefore va
However, people adopting the customer role have limited time available and so cannot work full-time with
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Test case description for dose checking
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Test automation
Test automation means that tests are written as executable components before the task is implemented
These testing components should be stand-alone, should simulate the submission of input to be tested an
As testing is automated, there is always a set of tests that can be quickly and easily executed
Whenever any functionality is added to the system, the tests can be run and problems that the new code
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Problems with test-first development
Programmers prefer programming to testing and sometimes they take short cuts when writing tests. For e
Some tests can be very difficult to write incrementally. For example, in a complex user interface, it is often
It difficult to judge the completeness of a set of tests. Although you may have a lot of system tests, your te
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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 pro
The sharing of knowledge that happens during pair programming is very important as it reduces the overa
Pair programming is not necessarily inefficient and there is some evidence that suggests that a pair worki
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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 d
The standard approach to project management is plan-driven. Managers draw up a plan for the project sh
Agile project management requires a different approach, which is adapted to incremental development an
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Scrum
Scrum is an agile method that focuses on managing iterative development rather than specific agile pract
There are three phases in Scrum.
The initial phase is an outline planning phase where you establish the general objectives for the project a
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
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Scrum terminology (a)
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Scrum terminology (b)
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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
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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 ch
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 t
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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, re
The whole team attends short daily meetings (Scrums) where all team members share information, descr
This means that everyone on the team knows what is going on and, if problems arise, can re-plan short-te
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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 everyon
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Distributed Scrum
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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 b
It is sometimes argued that the success of these methods comes because of improved communications w
Scaling up agile methods involves changing these to cope with larger, longer projects where there are mu
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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 d
‘Scaling out’ is concerned with how agile methods can be introduced across a large organization with man
When scaling agile methods it is important to maintain agile fundamentals:
Flexible planning, frequent system releases, continuous integration, test-driven development and good te
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Practical problems with agile methods
The informality of agile development is incompatible with the legal approach to contract definition that is c
Agile methods are most appropriate for new software development rather than software maintenance. Ye
Agile methods are designed for small co-located teams yet much software development now involves wo
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Contractual issues
Most software contracts for custom systems are based around a specification, which sets out what has to
However, this precludes interleaving specification and development as is the norm in agile development.
A contract that pays for developer time rather than functionality is required.
However, this is seen as a high risk my many legal departments because what has to be delivered canno
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Agile methods and software maintenance
Most organizations spend more on maintaining existing software than they do on new software developm
Two key issues:
Are systems that are developed using an agile approach maintainable, given the emphasis in the develop
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 sys
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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, yo
Is an incremental delivery strategy, where you deliver the software to customers and get rapid feedback f
How large is the system that is being developed? Agile methods are most effective when the system can
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Agile principles and organizational practice
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Agile principles and organizational practice
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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
What is the expected system lifetime?
Long-lifetime systems require documentation to communicate the intentions of the system developers to t
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 sy
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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 whic
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 en
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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Agile methods for large systems
Large systems are usually collections of separate, communicating systems, where separate teams develo
Large systems are ‘brownfield systems’, that is they include and interact with a number of existing system
Where several systems are integrated to create a system, a significant fraction of the development is con
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Large system development
Large systems and their development processes are often constrained by external rules and regulations l
Large systems have a long procurement and development time. It is difficult to maintain coherent teams w
Large systems usually have a diverse set of stakeholders. It is practically impossible to involve all of these
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Factors in large systems
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IBM’s agility at scale model
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Scaling up to large systems
A completely incremental approach to requirements engineering is impossible.
There cannot be a single product owner or customer representative.
For large systems development, it is not possible to focus only on the code of the system.
Cross-team communication mechanisms have to be designed and used.
Continuous integration is practically impossible. However, it is essential to maintain frequent system build
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Multi-team Scrum
Role replication
Each team has a Product Owner for their work component and ScrumMaster.
Product architects
Each team chooses a product architect and these architects collaborate to design and evolve the overall
Release alignment
The dates of product releases from each team are aligned so that a demonstrable and complete system i
Scrum of Scrums
There is a daily Scrum of Scrums where representatives from each team meet to discuss progressand pla
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Agile methods across organizations
Project managers who do not have experience of agile methods may be reluctant to accept the risk of a n
Large organizations often have quality procedures and standards that all projects are expected to follow a
Agile methods seem to work best when team members have a relatively high skill level. However, within l
There may be cultural resistance to agile methods, especially in those organizations that have a long hist
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