Behavior-Driven Development Using Specification by Example

This chapter highlights a crucial problem seen often in software development that is bridging the communication gap between business and technical language and that it can be addressed with “Behavior Driven Development” (BDD) methodology supplemented with “Specification By Example” approach of delivering the right software that matters. Effective communication has always been a challenge between clients, business stakeholders, project managers, developers, testers and business analysts because a “ubiquitous” language that every one can easily understand and use does not exist. Specification By Example serves as that ubiquitous language for all, helps build right software that matters through effective communication. Specifications are written in plain English language using the Gherkin syntax to describe various behaviors of software. BDD tools help write software specification using gherkin language and also create a living documentation that is automatically generated by programming language reflecting the current state of software at any given point of time.

Fixed Priced Projects in Agile

Agile software development has established as a reliable alternative to waterfall software development model. Unfortunately the use of agile software development has been limited to time based contracts and not for time limited contracts. The main reason for this limitation is the “Agile manifesto” itself. The forth value of the manifesto states that agile believers find more value in “Responding to change over following a plan”. This is the one of the main reasons why agile software development methods are not preferred for a fixed priced contract or time limited contract. The following case study provides an example on how the agile software development can be used for fixed priced software development contracts even when operating in offshore context. The agile software development concepts were used throughout to plan, execute, monitor, report, etc. for the project documented in this case study.

Usability Engineering in Agile Software Development Processes

As the popularity and acceptance of agile software development methodologies increases, the need to integrate usability engineering in the design and development processes is imperative. While, agile the focus is on technical and functional requirements not on end-user interaction, usability is usually only dealt with on the side. Combining this two in practice will go a long way in development of better product. Since the success and acceptance of software product depends not only on the technologies used but how well it integrates user-oriented methods. Therefore, this chapter puts together works on how usability engineering has been integrated with agile processes.

The Agility of Agile Methodology for Teaching and Learning Activities

This paper presents the review of literatures that shows the contribution of the agile methodology towards teaching and learning environment at university level. Teaching and learning at university has since migrated from traditional learning to active learning methodology where students are expected to learn by doing rather than listening passively to lectures alone. The agile methodology naturally has promoted the active participation of team members during system development phases. Some literature have proposed ways of adopting agile into active learning to improve teaching and learning processes and have highlighted this method as a great success. We would like to highlight how efficient the agile concept is in tackling several situations in academic learning as shown by an interesting mapping of agile principles to the classroom environment. We also offer options for the agile evaluation framework to consider academic environment as a tool to obtain the agile performance feedback.

Agile Software Development Challenges in Implementation and Adoption

The first part of this chapter presents the results of a systematic literature review on Agile Software Development (ASD) challenges as are reported in implementation and adoption cases. The data only considers the concrete evidences of surfaced problems mainly according to work experience and case study articles. The results are analyzed so that types, nature and intensity of the problems are determined and, compared to each other, within three major classifications of “large organizations”, “distributed settings” and “both large and distributed environments”. The analysis reveals that, in ASD, common organizational and managerial issues have been replaced by communication and collaboration problems. The second part uses the results of the part one as a frame of analysis to render more interpretations e.g. signifying that non-agility preconceptions are the root of a majority of problematic projects. Besides, mediating between agile projects and traditional forms of management, and, economic governance are two major rival approaches that are emerging in response to these challenges.

Ten Years of Experience with Agile and Model-Driven Software Development in a Legacy Platform

In this chapter, a report containing the author's many years of experience in software development together with a discussion of software engineering are presented. The report begins with the software crisis and includes different projects following the traditional waterfall model with heavy documents. In a re-engineering project of a legacy IT system by modernizing COBOL applications, we established an agile and model driven approach to software development. This approach which has been successfully applied in 13 projects since 2004 is presented. The key factors required for our success will also be discussed. Both the good and bad experiences of the last ten years will be summarized. The chapter will be finalized with a vision of a new architecture for agile software development.

Product Ownership Is a Team Sport

A number of agile brands downplay the need for business analysis and requirements management on agile projects, putting large store in the role of the Product Owner. This paper tackles some of the problems this misconception can result in and shows how effective product ownership almost always requires a team with a variety of skills and backgrounds to be effective. Product Ownership requires clarity of vision, alignment with organizational strategy, understanding of the development process and the ability to communicate with a wide variety of stakeholders across all levels both inside and outside the organization. The complexity of the role is most often more than a single person can (or should) cope with – effective product ownership requires a teamwork approach covering a variety of skills and knowledge.

Design of a Framework to Implement Agility at Organizational Level

While many existing Agile product development methodologies like SCRUM, Extreme Programming (XP), Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM), Feature Driven Development (FDD) etc. cover aspects related to developing & delivering a product solution, they are not meant to provide an end to end framework for an organization to transition / embrace and adopt agile way of software development. For an organization's agile journey to be successful we should consider several organizational elements like how to do a business case for agile, how to build agile leadership qualities for staff at all levels (especially Managers), how to setup & govern an agile organization, how to assess an agile organization etc.

A Transformation Approach for Scaling and Sustaining Agility at an Enterprise Level

The sustainability of agile transformations is deeply linked to how the organization “transforms” to agile. Sustainable, effective agile transformations affect all the elements of culture such as, leadership style, leadership values, work structures, reward systems, processes, and of course the work habits of people. How to affect that culture shift is the key question we will present in this chapter. The author will present two different common transformation approaches (organizational-led and process-led) and then describe a hybrid version called culture-led transformation that is designed to change critical organizational and personal habits to improve and sustain organizational agility.

Rapid Agile Transformation at a Large IT Organization

This chapter describes the agile transformation of an IT organization in China with about 4000 people including contractors. In the span of one year, 47 teams and 1700 engineers moved from traditional to agile way of working. There was a 44% reduction in development lead-time, 5% reduction in production defects and 22% reduction in production incidents. This agile transformation occurred at two levels. At the organization level, adoption speed was crucial, as we wanted to reach critical mass in rapid time with limited coaching resources. This was very much an entrepreneur startup problem, where customers in our case are teams and members in the IT organization. At the team level, a practice architecture provided a roadmap for continuous improvement. A theory-based-software-engineering approach facilitated deeper learning. Beyond the usual factors for leading successful change, this transformation exemplified the use of a startup mentality, social networks, practice architecture, simulation, gamification, and more importantly integrating theory and practice.