week 8

Q: Post an annotated bibliography for Part B of Assignment 2 to your blog. Your post should follow the advice given by the resources from the assignment 2 page on the course website.

A:

1: Agile software development – Wikipedia entry

The author of this entry in Wikipedia discusses almost every aspect of Agile software development starting from history of the Agile software development to criticisms over the Agile software development. In this article Agile software development is compared with traditional software development methodology – water fall method, iterative development methodology, and non-defined software development method – cowboy coding. Author touches principles behind the Agile software development methodology as well. From all these discussions the author suggests that Agile software development is suitable if there are fast changing requirements, and small skilled development group is involved. If there are clearly defined requirements, high secure development project, or larger developer involved then according to author the traditional methods are better than Agile software development methodology..

2: Highsmith, J & Cockburn, AC 2001, Agile software development: the business of innovation, Computer, Sept., vol. 34(9), pp. 120-127.

Authors of this article try to justify the initiative of the Agile software development methodology. Authors clearly expressing that the change in the business demand and process create the need of a new software development technique which can deliver the quality product quickly or on time. For example, earlier businesses belief put more effort to find out all the requirements in earlier state will reduce the cost and most of the time changes to the requirements were not accepted, but now trying to avoid changes to the requirement during the development process is considered as irresponsible behaviour of the software development team. Agile software development addresses these issues and come up with the solution to reduce the cost even the requirements are changed during the development process. Basic principles of Agile software development are having functioning program and effective team work. According to the author the success of the software development is mainly depend on the collaboration between all the stake holders of the particular software. This concept is emphasised in Agile software development process.

3: Truex, D, Baskeville, R & Klein H 1999, Growing Systems in emergent organisations, Communications of the ACM, Aug., vol. 42(8), pp. 117-123.

In this article Authors address the problems in the systems development methodologies. They argue that the business perspective only cause the problems not the software development tools. Most of the system development structures concentrate on low maintenance; this creates inability to adapt the changes in the requirements during the maintenance stage. Authors suggest a substitute solution for these, having a continuous development during the software life cycle. This will allow the information system to adapt to the organisational change, which cannot be eliminated to stay alive in this competitive world.