Agile practices in regulated railway software development

Abstract-Complex software is becoming an important component of modern safety-critical systems. To assure the correct function of such software, the development processes are heavily regulated by international standards, often making the process very rigid, unable to accommodate changes, causing late integration and increasing the cost of development. Agile methods have been introduced to address these issues in several software domains, but their use in safety-critical applications remains to be investigated. This paper provides an initial analysis of agile practices in the context of software development for the European railway sector, regulated by the EN 50128 standard. The study complements previous studies on the use of agile methods in other regulated domains. A systematic mapping between EN 50128 requirements and agile practices showed that all practices support some objectives of the standard. Important supporting features recognized were focus on simple design, test automation, coding standards, continuous integration and validation. However, several problematic areas were also identified, including vague requirement analysis and change management. Most agile practices must be adapted to suit regulated software development and this analysis outlines a subset of the required changes

Safety-Critical Systems and Agile Development: A Mapping Study

In the last decades, agile methods had a huge impact on how software is developed. In many cases, this has led to significant benefits, such as quality and speed of software deliveries to customers. However, safety-critical systems have widely been dismissed from benefiting from agile methods. Products that include safety critical aspects are therefore faced with a situation in which the development of safety-critical parts can significantly limit the potential speed-up through agile methods, for the full product, but also in the non-safety critical parts. For such products, the ability to develop safety-critical software in an agile way will generate a competitive advantage. In order to enable future research in this important area, we present in this paper a mapping of the current state of practice based on {a mixed method approach}. Starting from a workshop with experts from six large Swedish product development companies we develop a lens for our analysis. We then present a systematic mapping study on safety-critical systems and agile development through this lens in order to map potential benefits, challenges, and solution candidates for guiding future research.Comment: Accepted at Euromicro Conf. on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications 2018, Prague, Czech Republi

Understanding the Benefits of Agile Software Development in Regulated Environments

Agile software development has become increasingly popular in recent years. Applying agile methods, companies expect flexible planning, early delivery of the software product, and a continuous improvement of the development process itself. However, in regulated environments the use of agile development is not yet common practice. In such environments, various regulatory requirements apply which affect the software development process. This paper examines the use of agile software development in the regulated medical device industry and explores reasons for using agile methods although their use is limited. We interviewed agile software development teams in three different companies using semi-structured interviews. Using grounded theory methodology, we identify reasons why companies are using agile methods, even though problems and barriers exist. Our main achievement is the development of four categories, which describe the benefit of agile software development in regulated environments. These categories are master complexity, reduce effort, improve usability, and promote collaboration

AGILE–STAGE GATE MANAGEMENT (ASGM): NPD IMPLEMENTATION PRACTICES FROM GLOBAL FIRMS DEVELOPING COMPLEX, PHYSICAL PRODUCTS

Stage Gate Management (SGM) has been used successfully by global organizations to direct the New Product Development process (NPD) for years, recently a new variant of this venerable approach has emerged. Researchers and firms have begun to intersperse elements of Agile, as popularized for the development of software, to create an Agile – Stage Gate Management (ASGM) hybrid NPD framework. Agile practitioners believe in process waste reduction, an intense focus on customers, and the creation of nimble entrepreneurial project teams, which, for software products, has positively impacted development time to market, resource utilization, and market success, more generally, improved business outcomes. For NPD professionals responsible for physical products, not solely software, do these Agile tenets continue to produce results? With minimal available research, a Grounded Theory study was conducted to inductively create theory from the implementation of ASGM, specifically for firms that design, develop, and manufacture physical products. Twenty-nine experienced industry professionals were interviewed from four global companies which represented five distinct Business Units (BU) which competed in a variety of markets and industries around the world. From these interviews, a Content Analysis approach was employed to organize primary and secondary themes which illustrated NPD team practices. Additionally, a comparative multi-case study method further developed specific Agile/Scrum techniques implemented, the measures of business success realized, as well as, a new ASGM model for like firms. From this research, firms which developed physical products did not implement all Agile practices, only Team Interface, Product Demonstrations, and Specification Flexibility were uncovered. The cases did, however, subjectively realize an improved time to market, as well as, greater product success for projects commercialized using ASGM. Lastly, a new framework emerged which highlighted the unique practice of Agile behaviors earlier in the development process, but rigid, or SGM-like, activities closer towards product launch

Requirements Engineering that Balances Agility of Teams and System-level Information Needs at Scale

Context: Motivated by their success in software development, large-scale systems development companies are increasingly adopting agile methods and their practices. Such companies need to accommodate different development cycles of hardware and software and are usually subject to regulation and safety concerns. Also, for such companies, requirements engineering is an essential activity that involves upfront and detailed analysis which can be at odds with agile development methods. Objective: The overall aim of this thesis is to investigate the challenges and solution candidates of performing effective requirements engineering in an agile environment, based on empirical evidence. Illustrated with studies on safety and system-level information needs, we explore RE challenges and solutions in large-scale agile development, both in general and from the teams’ perspectives. Method: To meet our aim, we performed a secondary study and a series of empirical studies based on case studies. We collected qualitative data using interviews, focus groups and workshops to derive challenges and potential solutions from industry. Findings: Our findings show that there are numerous challenges of conducting requirements engineering in agile development especially where systems development is concerned. The challenges discovered sprout from an integration problem of working with agile methods while relying on established plan-driven processes for the overall system. We highlight the communication challenge of crossing the boundary of agile methods and system-level (or plan-driven) development, which also proves the coexistence of both methods. Conclusions: Our results highlight the painful areas of requirements engineering in agile development and propose solutions that can be explored further. This thesis contributes to future research, by establishing a holistic map of challenges and candidate solutions that can be further developed to make RE more efficient within agile environments

INTEGRATION OF SOFTWARE SAFETY ASSURANCE PRINCIPLES WITH AN AGILE DEVELOPMENT METHOD

Agile software development has had success in different domains. However there is one area where the implementation of agile methods still needs significant development – that is in the field of agile and safety-critical system development. In this field, software engineering processes need to be justified against the requirements of software safety assurance standards (such as ISO 26262 in the automotive domain). It is therefore important that agile development processes can be justified to levels of assurance equivalent to that provided by traditional development approaches. While there is existing literature concerning the integration of agile methods with specific safety-critical system development standards and agile methods, the question of how fundamental software safety assurance principles can be addressed within agile methods has received little attention. In this thesis we describe the results of practitioner surveys that highlight the primary concerns regarding the use of agile methods within safety-critical development. In the context of this survey, and of existing work on software safety assurance principles, we then present an initial proposal as to how assurance could be addressed with an existing agile development method – Scrum. This proposal was submitted to practitioners for initial feedback and evaluation. The results of this evaluation are also presented