Dan X. Houston
ABSTRACT
Although some researchers have studied agile techniques of software development using simulation, simulation studies of actual agile projects are difficult to find. This report on an industrial case study seeks to address this need by presenting an experience of modeling and analyzing an agile software development process using discrete event simulation. The study, undertaken for software process improvement, produced analyses that provided project management with process capability information. First, a sensitivity analysis used a designed experiment to measure the dominant factors in user story productivity. Second, a response surface provided information on the process tolerance for defect rework. Finally, a scenario comparison supported a management decision on sprint usage.
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Index Terms
- Modeling user story completion of an agile software process
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Reviews
Andrew Brooks
To determine the utility of software process simulation in an agile context, an industrial case study was undertaken. Using ExtendSim, a discrete event simulation was built of an agile software development process. Table 2 lists all of the input factors in the simulation and the kinds of distribution used. For example, the number of tasks per user story had a triangular distribution. Simulation outputs of interest included the number of user stories completed and the number of discrepancy reports (DRs) fixed. A sensitivity analysis was performed using six input factors deemed most relevant. The response surface of Figure 2 shows how the number of completed user stories dropped dramatically when the number of DRs per user story and the effort required per DR both increased. This led the investigators to recommend the introduction of quality assurance activities to help reduce the number of DRs. The agile software development team accepted this recommendation and introduced design reviews. The investigators also studied some specific scenarios. For example, requiring the last two sprints, rather than just the last sprint, to be used for rework only, resulted in three fewer user stories on average and a drop in developer utilization of three percent. All four recommendations for process improvement are sound. A minor criticism is that the paper might have more fully discussed the nature and scope of DRs. Why did it take two hours to fix some DRs, yet 80 hours to fix others__?__ I strongly recommend this paper to the agile software development community. Online Computing Reviews Service
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