Skip to main content

Decision Support for Iteration Scheduling in Agile Environments

  • Conference paper
Product-Focused Software Process Improvement (PROFES 2009)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 32))

Abstract

Today’s software business development projects often lay claim to low-risk value to the customers in order to be financed. Emerging agile processes offer shorter investment periods, faster time-to-market and better customer satisfaction. To date, however, in agile environments there is no sound methodological schedule support contrary to the traditional plan-based approaches. To address this situation, we present an agile iteration scheduling method whose usefulness is evaluated with post-mortem simulation. It demonstrates that the method can significantly improve load balancing of resources (cca. 5×), produce higher quality and lower-risk feasible schedule, and provide more informed and established decisions by optimized schedule production. Finally, the paper analyzes benefits and issues from the use of this method.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Dybå, T., Dingsøyr, T.: Empirical studies of agile software development: A systematic review. Information & Software Technology 50, 833–859 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Ambler, S.W.: Survey says: Agile works in practice. Dr. Dobb’s Journal (2006), http://www.ddj.com

  3. Chow, T., Cao, D.B.: A survey study of critical success factors in agile software projects. Journal of System and Software 81, 961–971 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Layman, L., Williams, L., Cunningham, L.: Motivations and measurements in an agile case study. Journal of Systems Architecture 52, 654–667 (2006)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Manifesto for agile software development, http://www.agilemanifesto.org

  6. Declaration of interdependence for agile software project management, http://pmdoi.org

  7. Scott, W., Ambler, P.K.: Lean development governance. Technical report, IBM Rational Software (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Qumer, A., Henderson-Sellers, B.: An evaluation of the degree of agility in six agile methods and its applicability for method engineering. Information & Software Technology 50, 280–295 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Cohn, M.: Agile Estimating and Planning. Prentice Hall PTR, Upper Saddle River (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Dubakov, M., Stevens, P.: Agile Tools: The good, the bad, the ugly. Agile Journal (2008), http://www.agilejournal.com

  11. Microsoft office project, sdk (2003), http://msdn2.microsoft.com

  12. Rally homepage, http://www.rallydev.com

  13. Xplanner homepage, http://xplanner.codehaus.org

  14. Ruhe, G., Saliu, M.: The art and science of software release planning. IEEE Software 22, 47–53 (2005)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Aurum, A., Wohlin, C.: The fundamental nature of requirements engineering activities as a decision-making process. Information & Software Technology 45, 945–954 (2003)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Karlsson, L., Thelin, T., Regnell, B., Berander, P., Wohlin, C.: Pair-wise comparisons versus planning game partitioning–experiments on requirements prioritisation techniques. Empirical Software Engineering 12, 3–33 (2007)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Carlshamre, P., Sandahl, K., Lindvall, M., Regnell, B., Dag, J.: An industrial survey of requirements interdependencies in software product release planning. In: RE 2001: Proceedings of the Fifth IEEE International Symposium on Requirements Engineering, pp. 84–93. IEEE Press, Los Alamitos (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Li, C., van den Akker, J.M., Brinkkemper, S., Diepen, G.: Integrated requirement selection and scheduling for the release planning of a software product. In: Sawyer, P., Paech, B., Heymans, P. (eds.) REFSQ 2007. LNCS, vol. 4542, pp. 93–108. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  19. Boehm, B.W., Horowitz, E., Madachy, R., Reifer, D., Clark, B.K., Steece, B., Brown, W.A., Chulani, S., Abts, C.: Software Cost Estimation with Cocomo II. Prentice Hall PTR, Englewood Cliffs (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Jung, H.W.: Optimizing value and cost in requirements analysis. IEEE Software 15, 74–78 (1998)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. van den Akker, M., Brinkkemper, S., Diepen, G., Versendaal, J.: Software product release planning through optimization and what-if analysis. Information & Software Technology 50, 101–111 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Denne, M., Cleland-Huang, J.: The incremental funding method: Data-driven software development. IEEE Software 21, 39–47 (2004)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Szoke, A.: A proposed method for release planning from use case-based requirements. In: Euromicro SEAA 2008: Proceedings of the 34th Euromicro Conference, pp. 449–456. IEEE Press, Los Alamitos (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  24. Larman, C.: Agile and Iterative Development: A Manager’s Guide. Pearson Education, London (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  25. Ambler, S.W., Jeffries, R.: Agile modeling: effective practices for extreme programming and the unified process. John Wiley & Sons Inc., New York (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  26. Unified modeling language version 2.0, http://www.uml.org

  27. Schwindt, C.: Resource Allocation in Project Management. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  28. Multilogic homepage, http://www.multilogic.hu

  29. Microsoft sharepoint (2007), http://www.microsoft.com/sharepoint/

  30. Mathworks homepage, http://www.mathworks.com/

  31. Kellner, M., Madachy, R., Raffo, D.: Software process simulation modeling: Why? what? how? Journal of Systems and Software 46, 91–105 (1999)

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Szőke, Á. (2009). Decision Support for Iteration Scheduling in Agile Environments. In: Bomarius, F., Oivo, M., Jaring, P., Abrahamsson, P. (eds) Product-Focused Software Process Improvement. PROFES 2009. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 32. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-02152-7_13

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-02152-7_13

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-02151-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-02152-7

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics