Agile Processes and Formal Methods (FM), water and oil, impossible mixture? Yes at first sight. Nevertheless, being formal methods weight processes and being agile processes informal approaches to software development, it is worth to study how much formal can be an agile process like Extreme Programming (XP) and how much agile can be a formal method. On our view, some XP practices are suitable ...

This paper is an empirical investigation of how Agile and Plan-based companies address teamwork. We have performed an investigation interviewing managers of 64 companies, 23 agile (hereafter defined with the term “agile companies”) and 41 non-agile (“plan-based”). The results of the study evidence a quite different approach to teamwork and team organization. Such differences are mainly in the s...

Distributed agile development (DAD) is a current trend for software development. It uses agile practices to promote iteration and flexibility in the distributed development of software projects. DAD involves a software vendor and their customers working together, leading to an overlap between their organisations. In this report, which is a progress report submitted for continuation towards a Ph...

Agile methods are often seen as providing ways to avoid overheads typically perceived as being imposed by traditional software development environments. However, few organizations are psychologically or technically able to take on an agile approach rapidly and effectively. Here, we describe a number of approaches to assist in such a transition. The Agile Software Solution Framework (ASSF) provi...

The widespread need for flexibility and adaptability in software development processes has resulted in the emergence of Agile practices and principles. Although different in fine-grained detail, all agile methodologies follow a common approach in their processes. To expose the common paradigm behind the design of agile processes, we have developed FRAME (FRactal Agile MEtamodel), a generic frac...

In recent years there has been a noticeable shift in attention from those who use agile software development toward lean software development, often labelled as a shift “from agile to lean”. However, the reality may not be as simple or linear as this label implies. To provide a better understanding of lean software development approaches and how they are applied in agile software development, w...

Prevalence of Agile methods in software companies is increasing dramatically. Software companies need to employ these methods to overcome the inherent challenges of traditional methods. However, transitioning to Agile approach is a topic of debate and there is no unique and well-defined transition model or framework yet. Although some research studies have addressed barriers and strengths behin...