Agile Development Methodology for Software Re-engineering

agile information systems, flexible information systems development, distributed information systems development, global software development, software development, special issue

Agile practices have recently gained popularity among large number of companies as a mechanism for reducing cost and increasing ability to handle change in dynamic market conditions. Based on the principles of the Agile manifesto [1, 2], researchers and practitioners have proposed several software development approaches such as Extreme Programming, Scrum and Feature-Driven Development. These and other agile approaches have had significant impact on industrial software development practices. However, there is also a significant concern and perplexity about the role and importance of the issues related to a system’s software architecture, which is considered one of the most important initial design artefacts. It is argued that software architecture is an effective tool to cut development cost and time and to increase the quality of a system. Many practitioners of Agile approaches appear to view software architecture in the context of the plan-driven development paradigm [3]. For them, upfront design and evaluation of software architecture requires too much work, which may have very little value to the customers of a system. Hence, they perceive architectural work as part of high ceremony processes, which usually require large amount of documentation. We maintain that these two seemingly opposing views to software engineering can be integrated but it requires that experts from both fields work together to overcome evident challenges in bridging these two paradigms together. Indeed, software architecture researchers and practitioners appear to believe that sound architectural practices cannot be followed using Agile approaches. However, these two extreme views of Agile and architecture appear to neglect that many agile experts emphasises the importance of paying attention to good design and architecture early in the development process [4, 5]. Recently, there is growing recognition of the importance of paying more attention to architectural aspects in agile approaches [3, 6, 7]. We argue that there is a vital need for devising a research agenda for identifying and dealing with architecture-centric challenges in agile software development. Such research agenda should make it possible to guide the future research on integrating architecture-centric methods in agile approaches and give advice to the software industry on dealing with architecture related challenges. Some of the questions to stimulate discussion in the workshop are: What is the role of software architecture in Agile software development? What are the key architecture-centric challenges and potential solutions in Agile software development projects? What is the strength of the evidence that attention to architectural issues can be counterproductive in Agile development or vice versa? What are the prerequisites for integrating Architecture-Centric methods in agile development and potential implications of such integration?

Despite of many criticisms, agile software development (Beck et al., Manifesto for Agile Software Development, http://agilemanifesto.org, [1]) philosophy has been proved to be quite successful to increase the project success rate up to a significant extent. The primary reasons behind the criticism of agile are the strong violation of the traditional disciplined software engineering theories, principles and practices. The goal of this research paper is to establish the fact that agility may also be achieved by following traditional process models especially with BRIDGE (Mandal, 2009 IEEE International Advance Computing Conference (IACC 2009) Patiala, India, [2]) process model. Hence, the aim of this paper is to integrate the agile and traditional disciplined software development process models and establish the compatibility between both the approaches. At the beginning, we have explored the objectives and principles of agile software development. Next, we briefly discussed the BRIDGE process model and further justified that--following BRIDGE process model, the philosophy of agile may also be achieved and conclude that BRIDGE model has both the capability of traditional software development process model as well as of the agile process.

The Internet economy has altered the rules of software engineering. Traditional development methodologies are too cumbersome to meet the rapidly changing requirements and short product cycles demanded by business. To meet these changing requirements, software developers have developed agile software development methodologies (SDMs) utilizing iterative development, prototyping, and templates. This research project investigated agile SDM implementation using an online survey sent to practitioners worldwide. This survey data were used to identify factors related to agile SDM implementation. Factors that included training, management involvement, access to external resources, and corporate size were found to impact implementation of an agile software development methodology. Factors such as using models, having an implementation plan, collocating the development team, and developing software for Internet or intranet use did not impact the implementation of an agile software development methodology. Several of the factors that impact the implementation of an agile development methodology are under the control of management. Organizations considering the implementation of an agile methodology may wish to manipulate some of these factors to increase the opportunities for success of their methodology.

Scrum is an agile software development methodology that suggests highly structured and iterative processes of software development by small autonomous teams (Schwaber & Sutherland, 2011). It is hypothesized that Scrum can be implemented in a way that supports and potentially improves Development Team members’ self-control. High self-control yields positive effects in countless life domains (Tangney, Baumeister, & Boone, 2004). One correlative study with 23 Development Teams and a total of 171 team members from an international software company investigated relevant conditions of Scrum to support and improve the self-control of Development Team members. Findings indicate a potential self-control improvement by the creation of a moderate concrete plan, the Sprint Backlog, at the beginning of a development cycle (Sprint), and performing an active team internal progress monitoring during the Sprint in short daily meetings (Daily Scrum Meetings). Planning and monitoring correlated simultaneously with high trait self-control and with low state self-control, indicating a possible self- control improvement through Scrum. Frequent team internal discussions targeting process improvements in Sprint Retrospective Meetings were related to high state self-control. In addition to correlations found with team members’ self-control, high team performance correlated with finishing committed Sprint Backlog Items by the end of the Sprints and reviewing these in the Sprint Review Meetings. Development Team members’ good health and low stress correlated with high team members’ self- control. High team autonomy was an essential requirement of the potential self-control improvement process. Moreover, high team autonomy correlated positively with high team performance and low experienced stress of Development Team members. Adding to these results, one laboratory experiment found indications that Sprint Backlog Item specificity may affect self-control during the processing of that item, suggesting a preference for moderate as opposed to low or highly specific Sprint Backlog Items. A second laboratory experiment failed to reproduce and extend this finding, probably because of the plan specificity operationalization. Overall, theoretical considerations and empirical indications are presented that Scrum could be implemented in a way that supports and potentially improves Development Team members’ self-control and health, reduces Development Team members’ experienced stress, and improves performance of the Development Team.

The emergence of software offshore outsourcing phenomena hits every country positively and one of the offshore client/vendor attractng factor is CMM certification. CMM is a well recognized and globally accepted standard in software development to process control, quality improvement, and measurement of software firm's capability. Therefore, Pakistani software firms (SMEs) are striving to achieve the CMM certifications to earn profit from offshore clients. In fact, CMM certification is not easy to adopt for all level of firms. Pakistan software industry is at its initial stage, so it is not recommendable to jump for CMM by software firms (SMEs) directly. The present research paper suggests that these software firms (SMEs) should go for adaptation of agile development methodology for excellent performance on the foot steps of CMM. In this way, software firms (SMEs) can leads toward CMM after agile maturity. The authors used the eXtreme Programming (XP) as an example that proves Agile Development Methodology can well fit the CMM framework and software development firms (SMEs) can achieve their objectives to participate in offshore outsourcing phenonmena.

In the past decade, there have been a number of notable changes in industrial software engineering, including the movement towards agility. The Agile Manifesto characterizes the term “agile”, and lists a set of principles that form a basis for agile methodologies [1], such as Extreme Programming (XP), OpenUP, and Scrum. There is creation, communication, and consumption of knowledge during (agile) software development [2]. For the success of an agile project, it is crucial that such knowledge be managed effectively. In doing so, an appropriate selection and use of certain tools and technologies can be helpful. In the past few years, there has been a proliferation of Social Web Applications, such as Wiki [3]. Indeed, a number of noteworthy uses of Wiki in software engineering have been reported [4]. However, these studies are largely independent of any software development methodology, and are centered mostly on collaboration. The primary reasons for selecting Wiki for agile software development include the following: (1) the deployment of agile methodologies, especially XP and Scrum, with teams that are increasingly geographically-dispersed, (2) the involvement in sustainable software development by organizations with basic infrastructure and modest budgets for resources, and (3) the need of inexpensive, mature, and widely-available tools for supporting iterative development, by almost anybody, at anytime, anywhere, using almost any device. The purpose of this research is to provide a framework for integrating Wiki for the purpose of facilitating the dynamics of knowledge during agile software development.

Bridging knowledge boundaries among project team members is essential to prevent delays or complete failure of software development projects. Prior researchers have reported that software prototypes can be used to help bridge knowledge boundaries between team members in traditional software development settings, yet their use in an agile development setting remains unexplored. Agile development centers the interactions between team members on emerging representations of the prototype whose properties are prone to change over time. Therefore, we conducted an in‐depth study of an agile development project to enhance our understanding on how software prototypes are used as boundary objects in a distributed team setting. Our analyses of team member interactions during 46 virtual meetings that took place over a period of 6 months revealed four different prototype use practices (exemplifying, contrasting, relating, framing) that were effective in bridging syntactic, semantic, or pragmatic knowledge boundaries. We also provide empirically grounded evidence of how variations in object properties can afford different use practices, how the use practices take advantage of these properties, and how object properties are reshaped through these use practices as different types of knowledge boundaries are bridged. These findings bear important implications for research on prototypes as boundary objects in software development in particular and boundary object use in general.

Today, the most vital step is software testing, especially in product quality. Agile software development is exceedingly difficult and has contentious issues in literature and business. Since most Agile techniques place more emphasis on development than software testing activities, different people have varying opinions about how software testing fits into these methodologies. Agile places a high emphasis on frequent deliveries and tight client connections. However, software testing is complex because agile does not incorporate many destructive testing techniques typically required for a product of higher-quality. The study reveals industry-wide Agile testing procedures and the main problems that arise when Agile development is used. Additionally covered are the differences between manual and automated testing, best automation practices, and ways to lead different testing teams in an agile testing environment. This study covers every facet of the Agile software testing process. Agile development has shown that testing is not a distinct stage but rather a crucial component of software development along with the coding. The agile team employs an overall strategy to produce software products of the highest quality. As part of an agile team, testers collect customer samples of the desired behaviour and collaborate with the developer's team to help the coders translate these examples into executable specifications. Coding and testing are done iteratively and incrementally, developing every item until it is valuable enough to release in production. It addresses several testing modalities. The classification provided by its quadrants aids teams in determining and organizing the necessary tests. To increase quality assurance, this article will examine various and improved Agile Testing Processes and methodologies. Additionally, the topic of Agile development's software testing method is covered. Agile development processes can be improved and more advantageous by incorporating testing procedures.

Effort estimation is an important practice in agile software development. The agile community believes that developers’ estimates get more accurate over time due to the cumulative effect of learning from short and frequent feedback. However, there is no empirical evidence of an improvement in estimation accuracy over time, nor have prior studies examined effort estimation in different development activities, which are associated with substantial costs. This study fills the knowledge gap in the field of software estimation in agile software development by investigating estimations across time and different development activities based on data collected from a large agile project. This study investigated effort estimation in various development activities, including feature development, bug fixing, and refactoring in agile software development. The results indicate that estimation of agile development does not improve over time, as claimed in the literature. Our data also indicate that no difference exists in the magnitude of estimation errors between feature tasks and bug-fixing/refactoring tasks, while bug-fixing and refactoring tasks are overestimated more frequently than feature tasks. This study also contributes to our knowledge about overestimation and underestimation patterns in agile software development.

Agile software development has proven to be a good fit for knowledge work in environments of high change rates, often resulting in hyper-productive teams. The bottom line seems to be that applying agile methods to software development projects reduces risk and time-to-market while high quality is achieved at the same time. We show how agility can be useful well beyond the context of individual projects, first, when managing a portfolio of projects of a company and second, when maneuvering a company in the marketplace. Companies can become more demand-driven and value-driven by embracing agility on these three levels and benefit from agility over a wider spectrum. Agile businesses react fast on changed circumstances, are flexible, bring response to the market as fast as possible, are proactive, and sense the change.

Software quality assurance is concerned with the efficient and effective development of large, reliable, and high-quality software systems. In agile software development and maintenance, refactoring is an important phase for the continuous improvement of a software system by removing quality defects like code smells. As time is a crucial factor in agile development, not all quality defects can be removed in one refactoring phase (especially in one iteration). Documentation of quality defects that are found during automated or manual discovery activities (e.g., pair programming) is necessary to avoid wasting time by rediscovering them in later phases. Unfortunately, the documentation and handling of existing quality defects and refactoring activities is a common problem in software maintenance. To recall the rationales why changes were carried out, information has to be extracted from either proprietary documentations or software versioning systems. In this chapter, we describe a process for the recurring and sustainable discovery, handling, and treatment of quality defects in software systems. An annotation language is presented that is used to store information about quality defects found in source code and that represents the defect and treatment history of a part of a software system. The process and annotation language can not only be used to support quality defect discovery processes, but is also applicable in testing and inspection processes.

Software development methodologies offer a methodical way to working on projects in accordance with client expectations. In the software development process, the customer is seen as the main entity. In order to build valuable software quickly and within a given budget, firms are now seeking to implement customer-centric techniques. Customer satisfaction plays a crucial part in the development and deployment of software products. One software development process that helps to best fulfil changing customer requirements is agile software development. In the following part, a table of comparisons between the various agile modelling methodologies with regard to requirements and the role of the customer follows a discussion of agile methodology. The Scrum & Extreme Programming framework is presented, along with how different firms use the approach for projects of various sizes.

The article analyzes the methodologies for implementing information systems in order to select the appropriate system for the created conditions of the project implementation: the introduction of e-learning technologies that imply a complex multifunctional e-learning system with the help of a small team and short implementation terms. The result of the analysis of methodologies for the implementation of information systems showed that none of the reviewed methodologies is suitable for the presented features of the project. Therefore, it was suggested to use Agile software development and IT projects managing Serum framework as a methodology for implementing information systems. For this purpose, the Agile software development was modified in accordance with the specifics of the implementing information systems methodologies. The process of implementing the e-learning system basing on Agile software development was described on the example of the implementation project done. The customer of the project has been Vladivostok Branch of the Russian Customs Academy.

Software testing process is an important factor affecting the quality of software testing, which plays an important role in the entire software development life cycle. In order to achieve a precise result of testing, different software testing process model will be chosen in different software development process for testing. Traditional testing process model will be chosen in traditional software development, and agile testing process model will be chosen in agile software development. However, there is no kind of testing process model proposed for a special software development which is a combination of traditional software development and agile software development. This article will propose a hybrid software testing process model aiming at a combination of traditional software development model and agile software development model. In the following sections, traditional testing process model and agile testing process model will be introduced respectively in the first place. Most attentions will be paid to the introduction and analysis of the hybrid software testing process model through one case. Furthermore, we will discuss the relationship of the data tracing involved in the testing process model.