Historical roots of Agile methods: where did “Agile thinking” come from?

The appearance of Agile methods has been the most noticeable change to software process thinking in the last fifteen years [16], but in fact many of the “Agile ideas” have been around since 70’s or even before. Many studies and reviews have been conducted about Agile methods which ascribe their emergence as a reaction against traditional methods. In this paper, we argue that although Agile methods are new as a whole, they have strong roots in the history of software engineering. In addition to the iterative and incremental approaches that have been in use since 1957 [21], people who criticised the traditional methods suggested alternative approaches which were actually Agile ideas such as the response to change, customer involvement, and working software over documentation. The authors of this paper believe that education about the history of Agile thinking will help to develop better understanding as well as promoting the use of Agile methods. We therefore present and discuss the reasons behind the development and introduction of Agile methods, as a reaction to traditional methods, as a result of people's experience, and in particular focusing on reusing ideas from histor

Agile in Public Administration: Oxymoron or reality? An experience report

In the last 10 years, Agile methods and practices have emerged as an alternative for software development. Different "flavors" of Agile have appeared ranging from project management to tests organization. These approaches have being gaining popularity and involve now a solid option for organizations developing software, but what about Public Administrations? Is Agile a suitable option for developing software in Public Administrations? Even if Public Administrations have been traditionally regarded as changeresistant, Agile approach can also provide them with the benefits of quick adaptation and frequent value delivery. This paper presents the results of two different projects, which use an Agile framework based on Scrum, developed by a Spanish Public Administration. Additionally, after considering the obtained results, it takes out some relevant learned lessons on the suitability of applying Agile approaches to Public Administration environments.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TIN2010-20057-C03-02Junta de Andalucía TIC-578

Open Source Tools to Support Teaching Agile Software Development

Learning agile software development methodologies are important due to the popularity of agility in software industry. Agile software development has several practices and each practice needs specific tools to work with. Fortunately, there are plenty of open source tools to support working with the agile practices. However, each tool is a separate tool and there is no information about the interrelation of those open source tools. In this paper we propose a set of open source tools to support agile software development course. We start from identifying the principles and practices of agile software development and continue with examining open source tools that fit with agile practices. The relationship between the open source tools is also determined, based on their functionalities

Agile values and their implementation in practice

Today agile approaches are often used for the development of digital products. Since their development in the 90s, Agile Methodologies, such as Scrum and Extreme Programming, have evolved. Team collaboration is strongly influenced by the values and principles of the Agile Manifesto. The values and principles described in the Agile Manifesto support the optimization of the development process. In this article, the current operation is analyzed in Agile Product Development Processes. Both, the cooperation in the project team and the understanding of the roles and tasks will be analyzed. The results are set in relation to the best practices of Agile Methodologies. A quantitative questionnaire related to best practices in Agile Product Development was developed. The study was carried out with 175 interdisciplinary participants from the IT industry. For the evaluation of the results, 93 participants were included who have expertise in the subject area Agile Methodologies. On one hand, it is shown that the collaborative development of product-related ideas brings benefits. On the other hand, it is investigated which effect a good understanding of the product has on decisions made during the implementation. Furthermore, the skillset of product managers, the use of pair programming, and the advantages of cross-functional teams are analyzed.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TIN2013-46928-C3-3-

Beneficial and Harmful Agile Practices for Product Quality

There is the widespread belief that Agile neglects the product quality. This lack of understanding how Agile processes assure the quality of the product prevents especially companies from regulated domains from an adoption of Agile. This work aims to identify which Agile Practices contribute towards product quality. Hence, data from a survey study is analyzed to identify Ag-ile Practices which are beneficial or harmful for the quality of the product. From 49 practices that were used in the survey so far, 36 were perceived to have a positive impact on product quality, while four practices were rated as being harmful. The results enrich understanding of how product quality can be achieved in Agile, and support selection of practices to improve quality

How Do Real Options Concepts Fit in Agile Requirements Engineering?

Agile requirements engineering is driven by creating business value for the client and heavily involves the client in decision-making under uncertainty. Real option thinking seems to be suitable in supporting the client’s decision making process at inter-iteration time. This paper investigates the fit between real option thinking and agile requirements engineering. We first look into previously published experiences in the agile software engineering literature to identify (i) ‘experience clusters’ suggesting the ways in which real option concepts fit into the agile requirements process and (ii) ‘experience gaps’ and under-researched agile requirements decision-making topics which require further empirical studies. Furthermore, we conducted a cross-case study in eight agile development organizations and interviewed 11 practitioners about their decision-making process. The results suggest that options are almost always identified, reasoned about and acted upon. They are not expressed in quantitative terms, however, they are instead explicitly or implicitly taken\ud into account during the decision-making process at interiteration time