Agile Methods Chapter 30

Agile Methods Key points ▫No method fits all projects or organizations ▫In General  A process to elicit, organize, document, v & v requirements  Maintain agreement with the customer  What requirements will be addressed  Any changes must be agreed upon 2

Agile Methods Key points (cont.) ▫If you want to be successful you must mitigate risks ▫The three processes that are represented in the book  Extreme  Agile  Robust 3

Agile Methods Information exchange: Direct verbal communication is ▫Fastest ▫Cheapest Other processes can take more time and money The larger the team/criticality of the project ▫The more need for structured processes 4

Agile Methods Why is direct verbal communication the best ▫Quick & easy Drawbacks ▫Stakeholders are not always accessible ▫It still needs documented  No record of decisions ▫You must have good face to face communication skills 5

Agile Methods Must eliminate as many unnecessary processes as possible ▫If it does not provide value remove it, its wasted effort ▫Over complicated process in large companies  Examples? Structured processes are all not bad ▫Almost required for large teams ▫Should be required when dealing with critical systems 6

Agile Methods So when do we need to document ▫Verification ▫Agreement (Internal and external) ▫Training ▫Regulatory 7

Agile Methods Defining the extent documentation ▫How polished should our documents be?  Depends on:  The document  The use  Level of sophistication ▫Rules to follow  Don’t have to polish every document  But don’t toss it out either 8

Agile Methods Extreme requirements (XP) ▫This can be more popular  Also very controversial  Preaches absolute minimum ▫More technical oriented ▫Designed for smaller teams (less than 10) ▫Customers are either onsite or highly available ▫Iterations should be smaller  Shorter time  Fewer requirements 9

Agile Methods Extreme requirements (XP) ▫Coding  Peer or TSP programming  Coding standards defined and followed  Write unit tests before coding  Code is still refractored often 10

Agile Methods How should we accomplish XP ▫Verbalize instead of documenting  Vision Document  Project concepts  Problem Statements ▫Document  Use Cases  Sequences/Flow  Using  Whiteboards  Post-it notes 11

Agile Methods How does Agile methods work with larger teams ▫~Civilized XP ▫ ▫Larger teams on multiple sites Suggested agile process ▫Reqs workshops & interviews ▫Use Case model 12

Agile Methods Agile process ▫Still capture URPS+ requirements  Keep it high level hitting important concepts  Leverage tools whenever possible  Refractor diagrams from code  Assist project management  Configuration management  Change Management 13

Agile Methods The Robust process ▫Better for  Larger  More complex or critical ▫Can handle  Large spread teams ▫Documentation-intensive  Vision  Use Cases & Use Case model  Supplementary Specification  Other UML models ▫Also uses tools and processess 14