Comparative Study on Agile software development methodologies

Today-s business environment is very much dynamic, and organisations are constantly changing their software requirements to adjust with new environment. They also demand for fast delivery of software products as well as for accepting changing requirements. In this aspect, traditional plan-driven developments fail to meet up these requirements. Though traditional software development methodologies, such as life cycle-based structured and object oriented approaches, continue to dominate the systems development few decades and much research has done in traditional methodologies, Agile software development brings its own set of novel challenges that must be addressed to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of the valuable software. It is a set of software development methods based on iterative and incremental development process, where requirements and development evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams that allows rapid delivery of high quality software to meet customer needs and also accommodate changes in the requirements. In this paper, we significantly identify and describe the major factors, that Agile development approach improves software development process to meet the rapid changing business environments. We also provide a brief comparison of agile development methodologies with traditional systems development methodologies, and discuss current state of adopting agile methodologies. We speculate that from the need to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of the valuable software, Agile software development is emerged as an alternative to traditional plan-based software development methods. The purpose of this paper, is to provide an in-depth understanding, the major benefits of agile development approach to software development industry, as well as provide a comparison study report of ASDM over TSDM.Comment: 25 pages, 25 images, 86 references used, with authors biographie

A coordination protocol for user-customisable cloud policy monitoring

Cloud computing will see a increasing demand for end-user customisation and personalisation of multi-tenant cloud service offerings. Combined with an identified need to address QoS and governance aspects in cloud computing, a need to provide user-customised QoS and governance policy management and monitoring as part of an SLA management infrastructure for clouds arises. We propose a user-customisable policy definition solution that can be enforced in multi-tenant cloud offerings through an automated instrumentation and monitoring technique. We in particular allow service processes that are run by cloud and SaaS providers to be made policy-aware in a transparent way

Distributed software development in a financial services organisation

The outsourcing of IS functionality to offshore development firms has been a growth industry that has blossomed over the last 10 years. This is as a result of organisations, seeking to optimise costs, mitigate risks, and achieve greater return on shareholder value by delegating the delivery of business information systems and applications to third party vendors. At the same time, distributed approaches to software development has arisen, there has been a growing interest in the applicability of lightweight or Agile development methodologies. As such, this paper this paper discusses experiences of a European Financial Services firm in outsourcing, and subsequently offshoring, two of its IT projects to vendor firms in India, where Agile approaches were used. The authors provide a model of the financial firm’s critical success factors presented as a frame of reference for others interested and involved in this topical area

Servitization and operations management : a service-dominant logic approach

Managing organisational performance in sectors such as equipment provision has become increasingly complex as competition has heightened and firms have felt pressure to add value through the provision of services (Baines et al, 2007; Howard and Caldwell, 2011; Neely et al., 2011). This provision is commonly referred to as the servitization of manufacturing (Vandermerwe & Rada, 1988). By extending the traditional offering of equipment to include service activities however, underlying operational delivery systems and processes have become more complex to manage and co-ordinate. No longer are firms simply making and shipping products; they are now engaged in a more complex world of design and delivery (Neely et al., 2011). This study aims to explore servitization from a value perspective through the lens of Service-Dominant (S-D) logic, and to propose its implications for operations management

Quality life cycle of object oriented software development in extreme programming

Thesis (Master)--Izmir Institute of Technology, Computer Engineering, Izmir, 2008Includes bibliographical references (leaves: 53)Text in English; Abstract: Turkish and Englishviii, 53 leavesAlthough there are many teams using Extreme Programming, many people still think that applying its values, principles and practices will cause catastrophic results.However extreme programming is not only compatible with today.s software standards, technologies and most importantly with the changes at every phase of software development but also improves the quality of software. In my thesis I analyze its values, principles, and practices and how they increase the quality comparing to old software development methodologies

On the Role of Agile Software Development Practices in Software Process Improvement

Tarkvaraarendus on endiselt võrdlemisi uus ja arenev valdkond. Tarkvaraettevõtted on otsinud tarkvara arendusprotsessi parendamist (ingl SPI) aastaid, kuid tegu on mitmekülgse valdkonnaga. Antud magistritöö eesmärk on pakkuda suurt pilti väleda tarkvaraarenduse meetoditest ja tavadest tarkvara arendusprotsessi parendamise kontekstis. Lisaks eelmainitule on antud töö eesmärgiks minna rohkem süvitsi väledate tarkvaraarenduse meetodite alamhulgaga laiahaardelisema kaardistamistöö raames, mis uurib SPI hetkeseisu kirjanduses. Leidmaks vastuseid töös püstitatud uuritavatele küsimustele, viidi antud töö raames läbi süstemaatiline kirjanduse ülevaade. Kirjanduse ülevaate tulemused valideeriti erinevates Eesti tarkvaraettevõtetes viies läbi küsitlusi. Avaldatud teoste, mis hõlmavad tarkvaraarenduse meetodite kasutamist SPI kontekstis aastane avaldamishulk on vaikselt kasvanud aastate jooksul. Kirjandusülevaate tulemused viitavad, et väledate meetodite kasutamine SPI jaoks pole ainult idee. Avaldatud teoste hulgas on võrdlemisi võrdselt teoseid, mis analüüsivad antud teemat idee tasandil ning neid, mis kirjeldavad väledate tarkvaraarenduse meetodite kasutamist ka professionaalses töös. Lisaks sellele viitavad tulemused, et professionaalide jaoks potentsiaalselt kasulikke teoseid on kirjanduses suur kogus. Enimuuritud väleda tarkvaraarenduse meetodid SPI kontekstis on Scrum ning Extreme Programming. Kõige enam mainitakse kirjanduses tavasid nagu pidev integratsioon, kõigepealt testi ning igapäevaste koosolekute pidamine. Kogu uuritud kirjanduses on piisvalt tõendeid tööstusest väledate meetodite kasutamisest SPI tarbeks, mida kinnistavad ka Eestis opereerivates tarkvaraettevõtetes läbiviidud küsitluse tulemused.Software development in general is still a fairly new and evolving field. Software development companies have been looking for software process improvement (SPI) for years, but the field of SPI is a diverse one. The goal of the Master’s thesis at hand is to provide the big picture of the use of agile methodologies along with its practices in the context of SPI within the current literature. Furthermore, the paper at hand aims to provide more insight into the subset of agile practices of a bigger, more general systematic mapping study on the current state of the art of software process improvement. To find answers to the research questions stated in the thesis, systematic literature review was conducted. The results of the literature review were validated by conducting surveys amongst professionals in several Estonian software development companies with varying sizes. The publication rate of papers concerning agile practices in the context of SPI shows a steady rise over the years. Results of the literature review show that the field of agile practices in SPI is fairly evenly balanced regarding being a concept or being adapted and evaluated in the industry. Furthermore, the results indicate that the there are many papers published that are of high relevance to industry professionals. By far the most discussed agile methods in the literature regarding SPI are Scrum and Extreme Programming while the most addressed practices include integrating often, testing first and conducting daily meetings. Within the analysed papers there are plenty of evidence from the industry of using agile methods in SPI. The survey conducted amongst several Estonian companies confirms that the use of agile practices in SPI is a relevant topic and that Scrum being the most popular topic in the literature is not a coincidence