Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
4.1 Case Study Description
The assessed project consisted in a software evolution of a product called Test
and OPeration Environment (TOPEN) [38]. TOPEN is an acceptance testing
tool built in-house that provides mechanisms for the definition and execution
of operation and test cases through a domain specific language. The product
evolution consisted in adapting TOPEN to test a biogas plant. The product
evolution was developed following Scrum method in 6 sprints and 15 weeks. The
Scrum Team was composed of 8 engineers: a Product Owner, a ScrumMaster,
and a Team of six developers. An internal proxy customer was taken into account
too. The Scrum methodology was applied as it is described following.
During the pre-game phase, US were first captured, together with the proxy
customer, which formed a product backlog. The US were grouped in sprints of
two weeks approximately. A planning meeting was established for every sprint.
During the planning meeting, the sprint ending date is defined and the initial
US are further elaborated together with the Product Owner and the Team in
by means of a
planning game
. The planning game is technique that guides the
estimating of the US involving all the Scrum Team. However, the developers
found that the US estimations were too optimistic in the first planning games,
which made several deviations during the first sprints. Through sprints devel-
opers learned more about Scrum practices, the needs of the customer and the
product under development. As a consequence, the US estimations became more
precise. After the planning game, the sprint backlog is formed. Product backlog
and sprint backlogs were stored and managed through a tool named Rally
3
. Rally
is a web based tool for managing user stories, tasks, backlogs, plan, releases, test
cases, and defects.
During the sprint, daily meetings solved small problems in an agile way mak-
ing technical decisions by themselves (self organizing teams). At the end of the
sprint, a progress report was elaborated in the review meeting. The customer
representatives validated the work products (documents, releases, or other arte-
facts), and thus the inconsistencies between their needs, plans and project work
were continuously followed. Changes in the client needs were discussed, and the
product backlog was updated correspondingly. Finally a retrospective meeting
was established at the end of every sprint for analyzing strengths, weaknesses,
problems, and improvements of the methods, the team and the project. The
feedback obtained was applied to the following sprints.
4.2 A CMMI Appraisal Process Approach
Once the empirical case project has been described, the next step is the appraisal
process description. We are selected the appraisal process defined by [21]. It is
characterized by (i) appraisal teams of 3-4 members, (ii) appraisal time of 2-3
weeks, (iii) require considerable resources, (iv) medium intrusiveness, and (v)
medium reliability and validity of the appraisal results.
3
http://www.rallydev.com/
