Benjamin Timmermans / Jurian van de Laar (Firma Improve)
Can Agile and Requirements go together?
We see solutions in 2 different directions: Formal and lean
Formal
Lifecycle like V-Modell
The lean way should not be understood as a undisciplined way to develop software. It’s rather a way to match additional or new requirements.
The formal way
– People can more easily be exchanged
– Changes need to be reviewed, commited to and tracked
– Changes go through a formal change process
The lean way
– Less need for written and detailed specifications (all the knowledge is in the team)
– Dealing with changing requirements is possible
– Set priorities, refactoring, feedback, involvement
– Tooling: collaboration tools, e.g. Wiki, FitNesse
Case study: Healthcare, X-Ray systems
– Large projects, safety-critical
– Formal verification & traceability required (FDA)
– CMMI process improvement program
– V-model development life cycle
Good: Mature and safe process
Bad: Difficult to reduce project elapse-time
They took just the lower part of the V-model and replaced it with the scrum method. The upper part stayed as in the V-model description. The study part took the same time, but the programming part was much faster.
Case study: automotive navigation systems
– Fast innovation cycles, technology/feature driven
– Agile development, scrum project management
– Requirements: specifications, feature list, backlog
– No requirements engineers anymore
Good: Flexible, motivating
Bad: Lack of requirements
Solutions: With in the Sprints the evolved the testing team to match the fresh requirements out of market.
The best out of 2 worlds:
– Strong stakeholder involvement
– Good communication
– Level of detail depends on business factors
– Requirements skills & training (eg. IREP)
– Cross-discipline cooperation
Principles over strict methodology
Best practices over theory
Cooperation over separation