Agile Principles Applied to a Complex Long Term Research Activity - The PERIMETER Approach

Abstract

Agile software development is a group of software development methodologies that are based on similar principles, as defined in the Agile Manifesto. Agile software projects are characterized by iterative and incremental development, accommodation of changes and active customer participation. The popularity of agile principles is steadily increasing. Their adopters report that this development process leads to higher software quality and customer satisfaction ratings when compared to using traditional methods, with more productive and motivated developers. Whilst smaller developer teams have cited higher success rates than larger teams, agile principles can and have been applied successfully to large scale projects and distributed teams. Despite these advantages, there are very few research activities that apply agile principles in their development. Perhaps this is due to the nature of research projects, which usually span years rather than months, frequently involve experimental work, and consist of team members with varying levels of experience, often coming from different organizations, research groups and countries. This paper examines how agile principles can be adapted to suit one such long term research activity; PERIMETER