It Describes Agile Methodologies
A Survey of Agile Development Methodologies
Agile development methodologies are emerging in the software industry. In this chapter, we provide an introduction to agile development methodologies and an overview of four specific methodologies: • Extreme Programming • Crystal Methods • Scrum • Feature Driven Development Plan-driven methods work best when developers can determine the requirements in advance . . . and when the requirements remain relatively stable, with change rates on the order of one percent per month. -- Barry Boehm [11] Plan-driven methods are those that begin with the solicitation and documentation of a set of requirements that is as complete as possible. Based on these requirements, one can then formulate a plan of development. Usually, the more complete the requirements, the better the plan. Some examples of plan-driven methods are various waterfall approaches and others such as the Personal Software Process (PSP) [28] and the Rational Unified Process (RUP) [30, 31]. An underlying assumption in plan-driven processes is that the requirements are relatively static. On the other hand, iterative methods, such as spiralmodel based approaches [12, 14], evolutionary processes described in [5, 22, 32, 33], and recently agile approaches [45] count on change and recognize that the only constant is change. The question is only of the degree and the impact of the change. Beginning in the mid-1990’s, practitioners began finding the rate of change in software requirements increasing well beyond the capabilities of classical development methodologies [11, 27]. The software industry, software technology, and customers expectations were moving very quickly and the customers were becoming increasingly less able to fully state their needs up front. As a result, agile methodologies and practices emerged as an explicit attempt to more formally embrace higher rates of requirements change. . In this chapter, we provide background information on agile principles, and
Agile development methodologies are emerging in the software industry. In this chapter, we provide an introduction to agile development methodologies and an overview of four specific methodologies: • Extreme Programming • Crystal Methods • Scrum • Feature Driven Development Plan-driven methods work best when developers can determine the requirements in advance . . . and when the requirements remain relatively stable, with change rates on the order of one percent per month. -- Barry Boehm [11] Plan-driven methods are those that begin with the solicitation and documentation of a set of requirements that is as complete as possible. Based on these requirements, one can then formulate a plan of development. Usually, the more complete the requirements, the better the plan. Some examples of plan-driven methods are various waterfall approaches and others such as the Personal Software Process (PSP) [28] and the Rational Unified Process (RUP) [30, 31]. An underlying assumption in plan-driven processes is that the requirements are relatively static. On the other hand, iterative methods, such as spiralmodel based approaches [12, 14], evolutionary processes described in [5, 22, 32, 33], and recently agile approaches [45] count on change and recognize that the only constant is change. The question is only of the degree and the impact of the change. Beginning in the mid-1990’s, practitioners began finding the rate of change in software requirements increasing well beyond the capabilities of classical development methodologies [11, 27]. The software industry, software technology, and customers expectations were moving very quickly and the customers were becoming increasingly less able to fully state their needs up front. As a result, agile methodologies and practices emerged as an explicit attempt to more formally embrace higher rates of requirements change. . In this chapter, we provide background information on agile principles, and