Empirical investigation of agile software development: cloud perspective

Abstract

Technological advancements have contributed to more complex software demands. The Agile approach to software development is widely practiced by the software development industry as it offers faster production with a promise of better software quality. It also provides a flexible process to accommodate changes during the software development life cycle, as per dynamic user requirements. In this paper we characterize the significance of software development models and the role of Agile methodologies in today's dynamic world of technologies. The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the choice between two of the Agile methodologies, Scrum and Extreme Programming. The outcome of the investigation based on secondary sources and limited primary sources, reveals that current software industry practices tend to opt for Scrum-based development. This work highlights the benefits of bringing the cloud and Agile methods of software development together, to fully realize the potential of the distributed paradigm.

References

1. Da Silva, E.A.N., Lucredio, D. 2012. Software Engineering for the Cloud: A Research Roadmap. In Software Engineering (SBES), (2012) 26th Brazilian Symposium on, 71--80. DOI=10.1109/SBES.2012.12.
2. Sommerville, I. 2004. Software Engineering, Addison Wesley, 7 Ed.
3. Highsmith, J. and Cockburn, A. 2001. Agile Software Development: The Business of Innovation. Computer, vol. 34, 120--122. DOI=10.1109/2.947100
4. Begel, A. and Nagappan, N. 2007. Usage and perceptions of Agile software development in an industrial context: An exploratory study. In Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement, (Washington, 2007), 255--264. DOI=10.1109/ESEM.2007.12.
5. Yau, s.s., and An, H.G. 2011.Software Engineering Meets Services and Cloud Computing. Computer, Vol 44, no 10 (Oct. 2011). DOI=10.1109/MC.2011.267
6. Magdaleno, A.M., et al., Reconciling software development models: A quasi-systematic review, Journal of Systems and Software, v.85 no.2, 351--369 ( February, 2012). DOI=10.1016/j.jss.2011.08.028
7. Rising, Linda, Janoff, N.S. 2000. The Scrum Software Development Process for Small Teams, IEEE Software, vol. 17, no. 4 (July/Aug. 2000), 26--32. DOI= 10.1109/52.854065.
8. Williams, L., Cockburn, A. 2003. Agile software development: it's about feedback and change, Computer, Vol.36, no.6 (2003), 39--43. DOI= 10.1109/MC.2003.1204373.
9. Salo, O. and Abrahamsson, P. 2008. Agile Methods in European Embedded Development Organizations: a survey study of Extreme Programming and Scrum, IET Software, vol. 2 (February, 2008), 58--64. DOI = 10.1049/iet-sen:20070038.
10. MSDN Library, Agile Principles and Values by Jeff Sutherland, Microsoft Developer Network White Paper. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd997578.as
11. Standish Group 2011. The Crisis in Software: The Wrong Process Produces the Wrong Results, The Standish Group Report (2011). www.controlchaos.com/storage/S3D%20First%20Chapter.pdf.
12. French Scrum User Group 2009. A National Survey on Agile Methods in France. (June 2009) www.frenchsug.org
13. Elwer, P., et al.. 2008. Agile Project Development at Intel: A Scrum Odessey, Danube Case Study of Intel Corporation. http://Scrumtrainingseries.com/Intel-case-study.pdf
14. Dumbre, A., et al. 2012. Practicing Agile software development on the Windows Azure Platform., White Paper Infosys (2012). www.infosys.com/cloud/.../practicing-Agile-softwaredevelopment.pdf
15. Begel, A., Nagappan, N. 2008. Pair programming: what's in it for me? , In Proceedings of the Second ACM-IEEE international symposium on Empirical software engineering and measurement, Kaiserslautern, Germany. DOI=10.1145/1414004.1414026
16. Schach, S. 2007. Software Engineering, Tata McGraw Hill, Ed. 7, 4--6.
17. Sommerville, I. 2005. Software Engineering, Pearson, Ed. 7, 26, 418--430.
18. Randell, B. 1996. The 1968/69 NATO Software Engineering Reports. http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/brian.randell/NATO/NAT OReports.
19. Beck, K. 1999. Embracing Change with Extreme Programming. Computer, vol.32, 70--77. DOI=10.1109/2.796139
20. Beck, K., et al. 2001., Manifesto for Agile Software Development. http://Agilemanifesto.org/
21. Carvalho, F., et al.. 2013. Service Agile Development Using XP, SOSE, IEEE Conference Publication, 254--259. DOI=10.1109/SOSE.2013.25
22. Murphy, B., et al.. 2013. Have Agile Techniques been the Silver Bullet for Software Development at Microsoft?, Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement, ACM / IEEE International Symposium,(2013), 75--84. DOI=10.1109/ESEM.2013.21
23. Hasteer, N., Bansal, A., Murthy, B.K. 2013. Pragmatic Assessment of Research Intensive Areas in Cloud : A Systematic Review, In ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes, Vol. 38, no.3 (May 2013 ), ACM New York, NY, USA, 1-6.
24. Willie, 2011. Reinforcing Agile Software Development in the Cloud, White Paper CollabNet Inc. https://www.open.collab.net/media/pdfs/CollabNet%20Whitepaper_Reinforcing%20Agile%20Dev%20in%20the%20Cloud.pdf?_=d
25. Munshi, D. 2009. Adopting Agile Methodology in a Large Scale Distributed Development Environment, TCS White Papers (2009).http://www.tcs.com/sitecollectiondocuments/white%20papers/GCP_whitepaper_Agile_Methodology_Large_Scale_Distributed_Development_Environment_01_2010.pdf
26. Qumer, A., Henderson-Sellers, B. 2006. Evaluation of XP and Scrum using the 4D analytical tool (4-DAT), European and Mediterranean Conference on Information Systems (July 6-7 2006).epress.lib.uts.edu.au/research/bitstream/handle/.../2006005499.pdf?
27. Ramanujam, R., et al.. 2011. Collaborative and Competitive Strategies for Agile Scrum Development. In proceedings of 7th International conference on Network Computing and Advanced Information Management (NMC), IEEE Conference Publication, 123--127.

Index Terms

• Social and professional topics

  • Professional topics

    • Management of computing and information systems

      • Project and people management

• Software and its engineering

  • Software creation and management

    • Software development process management