XP customer practices: A grounded theory

The Customer is a critical role in XP, but almost all XP practices are presented for developers by developers. While XP calls for Real Customer Involvement, it does not explain what XP Customers should do, nor how they should do it. Using Grounded Theory, we discovered eight customer practices used by successful XP teams: Customer Boot Camp, Customer’s Apprentice, Customer Pairing, and Programmer’s Holiday support the well-being and effectiveness of customers; Programmer On-site and Road shows support team and organization interactions; and Big Picture Up Front and Re-calibration support Customers steering the whole project. By adopting these processes, XP Customers and teams can work faster and more sustainably

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

<i>Trace++</i>: A Traceability Approach for Agile Software Engineering

Agile methodologies have been introduced as an alternative to traditional software engineering methodologies. However, despite the advantages of using agile methodologies, the transition between traditional and agile methodologies is not an easy task. There are several problems associated with the use of agile methodologies. Examples of these problems are related to (i) lack of metrics to measure the amount of rework that occurs per sprint, (ii) interruption of a project after several iterations, (iii) changes in the requirements, (iv) lack of documentation, and (v) lack of management control. In this paper we present Trace++, a traceability technique that extends traditional traceability relationships with extra information in order to support the transition between traditional and agile software development. The use of Trace++ has been evaluated in two real projects of different software development companies to measure the benefits of using Trace++ to support agile software development

EXTREME PROGRAMMING AND RATIONAL UNIFIED PROCESS – CONTRASTS OR SYNONYMS?

The agile movement has received much attention in software engineering recently. Established methodologies try to surf on the wave and present their methodologies a being agile, among those Rational Unified Process (RUP). In order to evaluate the statements we evaluate the RUP against eXtreme Programming (XP) to find out to what extent they are similar end where they are different. We use a qualitative approach, utilizing a framework for comparison. RUP is a top-down solution and XP is a bottom-up approach. Which of the two is really best in different situations has to be investigated in new empirical studies.extreme programming

An Analysis of the Costs and Benefits of Delaying the Release of Windows XP

Various parties are urging Microsoft to delay the release of their new PC operating system, Windows XP. Those calling for a delay cite features in Windows XP that they claim threaten competition in software in ways reminiscent of Microsoft's actions to protect Windows from Netscape Navigator's Internet Browser in the mid-to-late 1990s. However, Hahn argues that circumstances in the case of Windows XP are quite different. While it is not possible to quantify the impacts of delay, the evidence strongly suggests that the costs would be substantial and the benefits to competition would be minimal at best. Indeed, there is good reason to believe that the release of Windows XP will increase consumer choice and provide additional competition in key software - most significantly, in instant messaging. In the end, the evidence leans heavily towards supporting the timely release of Windows XP. The only parties that clearly stand to gain from a delay are Microsoft's rivals.