Database Reference
In-Depth Information
brief description, list of purposes and several quality criteria. The DSDM process assumes
that the time is fi xed for the life of a project and project resources are fi xed as far as pos-
sible, while the requirements that will be satisfi ed are allowed to change, which is largely
opposite to traditional development processes. Although there is evidence (white papers)
about combining DSDM with UML and RUP, supporting materials and white papers are
available only for consortium partners for an annual cost. DSDM defi nes 15 roles for us-
ers and developers. The team consists of between two and six members, and several teams
can exist in the project. According to its authors and users, DSDM has proved to be one of
the most successful frameworks for agile software development. The new topic on DSDM
(Stapleton, 2003) has been updated to refl ect recent changes in the framework, as well as
experiences and results in applying it in practice.
ANALYSIS OF AGILE METHODS
In this section we will summarize the main characteristics of presented agile meth-
odologies and provide their comparison. In the sequel, special attention will be put to ana-
lyzing the support of modeling and design activities that exist in XP, FDD, AM and XM,
while other methodologies are not taken into account because of the lack of a development
and modeling practice. According to Sol (1983) the analysis and comparison of software
development methods can be approached in fi ve different ways:
Describe an idealized method and evaluate other methods against it.
•
Distil a set of important features inductively from several methods and compare each
method against it.
•
Formulate a priori hypotheses about the method's requirements and derive a framework
from the empirical evidence in several methods.
•
Defi ne a meta-language as a frame of reference against which you describe many
methods.
•
Use a contingency approach and try to relate features of each method to specifi c
problems.
•
Our goal here is to identify differences and similarities between different agile software
development methods. Therefore, we will use the combination of the second and the fourth
approach in comparing the methods. The methods will be analyzed through the chosen set of
important features concerning the method, its usage and adoption, key process characteristics
as well as the support to modeling and architecture design activities.
Comparison of Basic Characteristics
Agile Methodologies will be analyzed and compared using several sets of criteria. Key
characteristics, special features and shortcomings of agile methodologies are shown in Table 2.
The current state of the methodologies, the level of documentation and their adoption in
practice are shown in Table 3, while Table 4 analyzes certain aspects of the development
processes of agile methodologies.
