Agile Practices

A special issue of Future Internet (ISSN 1999-5903).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 October 2011) | Viewed by 17387

Special Issue Editor

Technology Institute of Information and Mathematical Sciences Albany Campus, Massey University Private Bag 102-904 North Shore Mail Centre Auckland, New Zealand
Interests: mobile and blended technology enhanced learning; agile and test driven software development; virtual world learning; web technologies

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

2011 sees the 10th anniversary of the Manifesto for Agile Software Development. During that decade, agile practices have moved firmly into the mainstream, but there are still many questions to be answered and many innovations to be explored. The agile approach to information systems building encompasses many different activities and artefacts, including project management, software development tools and techniques and organisational re-engineering, and these aspects interact in complex and challenging ways. The popularity of hybrid approaches to agile development, for example the common pairing of Scrum and XP, raises questions about the similarities an differences between various agile methods, and the consequences of choosing particular methods, techniques, and combinations of these.  Practitioners and researchers view agile methods from many different perspectives, including management, testing, team dynamics and architecture, amongst many others. We continue to find new ways to practice agile development, for example with non iterative management approaches like Kanban  (revisiting the roots of agile in lean manufacturing), innovative test tools such as Infinitest, and efforts to scale agile into ever more complex and large scale systems development.

The special issue takes as its theme the challenges and opportunities of the second decade of the agile manifesto.  Now that agile practices are widespread, we have the opportunity to gather large scale, longitudinal empirical data, and to reflect and build on previous research and practice. There is already a long tradition of international conferences that have revealed the work of the agile community, for example the Agile series, presented by the Agile Alliance and with a strong industry flavour, and the XP series, which tends to encompass both industry and academia.  There are also a number of journals, both commercial and academic, that have published material related to agile development. This gives us a rich background of research and experience literature from which to build new ideas, theories and studies that can take our understanding of agile forward and increase the effectiveness of agile practices as we move into the next decade of the agile age.

Dr. David Parsons
Guest Editor

Keywords

  • agile software development
  • agile teams and environments
  • agile methods (Scrum, Kanban, Lean, XP, FDD, Crystal etc.)
  • agile techniques  (pair programming, continuous integration, test driven development, information radiators etc.)
  • automated software testing
  • agile project management (techniques, tools, metrics etc.)
  • large and/or distributed agile implementation
  • agile organisations
  • user stories and story mapping

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

254 KiB  
Article
Test Driven Development: Advancing Knowledge by Conjecture and Confirmation
by David Parsons, Ramesh Lal and Manfred Lange
Future Internet 2011, 3(4), 281-297; https://doi.org/10.3390/fi3040281 - 14 Dec 2011
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 9835
Abstract
Test Driven Development (TDD) is a critical agile software development practice that supports innovation in short development cycles. However, TDD is one of the most challenging agile practices to adopt because it requires changes to work practices and skill sets. It is therefore [...] Read more.
Test Driven Development (TDD) is a critical agile software development practice that supports innovation in short development cycles. However, TDD is one of the most challenging agile practices to adopt because it requires changes to work practices and skill sets. It is therefore important to gain an understanding of TDD through the experiences of those who have successfully adopted this practice. We collaborated with an agile team to provide this experience report on their adoption of TDD, using observations and interviews within the product development environment. This article highlights a number of practices that underlie successful development with TDD. To provide a theoretical perspective that can help to explain how TDD supports a positive philosophy of software development, we have revised Northover et al.’s conceptual framework, which is based on a four stage model of agile development, to reinterpret Popper’s theory of conjecture and falsification in the context of agile testing strategies. As a result of our findings, we propose an analytical model for TDD in agile software development which provides a theoretical basis for further investigations into the role of TDD and related practices. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Agile Practices)
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345 KiB  
Article
Evolving Web-Based Test Automation into Agile Business Specifications
by Rick Mugridge, Mark Utting and David Streader
Future Internet 2011, 3(2), 159-174; https://doi.org/10.3390/fi3020159 - 03 Jun 2011
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 7117
Abstract
Usually, test automation scripts for a web application directly mirror the actions that the tester carries out in the browser, but they tend to be verbose and repetitive, making them expensive to maintain and ineffective in an agile setting. Our research has focussed [...] Read more.
Usually, test automation scripts for a web application directly mirror the actions that the tester carries out in the browser, but they tend to be verbose and repetitive, making them expensive to maintain and ineffective in an agile setting. Our research has focussed on providing tool-support for business-level, example-based specifications that are mapped to the browser level for automatic verification. We provide refactoring support for the evolution of existing browser-level tests into business-level specifications. As resulting business rule tables may be incomplete, redundant or contradictory, our tool provides feedback on coverage. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Agile Practices)
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