Agile Release Planning through Optimization

Ákos Szőke

2009

Abstract

Agile software development represents a major approach to software engineering. Agile processes offer numerous benefits to organizations including quicker return on investment, higher product quality, and better customer satisfaction. However, there is no sound methodological support of agile release planning – contrary to the traditional, plan-based approaches. To address this situation, we present an agile release planning model and a heuristic optimization algorithm as a solution. Four real life data sets of its application and evaluation are drawn from the lending sector. The experiment demonstrates that this approach can provide more informed and established decisions and support easy optimized release plan productions. Finally, the paper analyzes benefits and issues from the use of this approach in system development projects.

References

  1. Information Systems Audit and Control Association: Control objectives for IT and related technology. http://www.isaca.org/ (2008) Accessed on 28 May 2008.
  2. Project Management Institute: Organizational pm maturity model. http://msdn2.microsoft.com (2003) Accessed on 28 May 2008.
  3. et al., S.A.: Best practices for lean development governance. The Rational Edge (2007)
  4. Chau, T., Maurer, F., Melnik, G.: Knowledge sharing: Agile methods vs. tayloristic methods. (2003) 302-307
  5. Manifesto, A.: Manifesto for agile software development. URL: www.agilemanifesto.org (2001) Accessed on 27 Feb 2008.
  6. Dyba°, T., Dingsøyr, T.: Empirical studies of agile software development: A systematic review. Information and Software Technology 50 (2008) 833-859
  7. Ambler, S.W.: Survey says: Agile works in practice. Dr. Dobb's Journal (2006)
  8. Layman, L., Williams, L., Cunningham, L.: Motivations and measurements in an agile case study. Journal of Systems Architecture 52 (2006) 654-667
  9. Layman, L., Williams, L., Cunningham, L.: Exploring extreme programming in context: An industrial case study. ADC 7804: Proceedings of the Agile Development Conf. (2004) 32-41
  10. Beck, K., Andres, C.: Extreme Programming Explained : Embrace Change (2nd Edition). Addison-Wesley Professional (2004)
  11. Schwaber, K., Beedle, M.: Agile Software Development with Scrum. Prentice Hall PTR, Upper Saddle River, NJ, USA (2001)
  12. Palmer, S.R., Felsing, M.: A Practical Guide to Feature-Driven Development. Pearson Education (2001)
  13. Chow, T., Cao, D.B.: A survey study of critical success factors in agile software projects. Journal of System and Software 81 (2008) 961-971
  14. Nuseibeh, B., Easterbrook, S.: Requirements engineering: a roadmap. In: ICSE - Future of SE Track. (2000) 35-46
  15. Cohn, M.: Agile Estimating and Planning. Prentice Hall PTR, NJ, USA (2005)
  16. Cohn, M.: User Stories Applied For Agile Software Development. Addison-Wesley (2004)
  17. Anda, B., Dreiem, H., Sjøberg, D.I.K., Jørgensen, M.: Estimating software development effort based on use cases - experiences from industry. In: 4th International Conference on the UML. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer (2001) 487-502
  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: REFSQ. Volume 4542 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science., Springer (2007) 93-108
  19. et al., P.C.: An industrial survey of requirements interdependencies in software product release planning. (2001) 84
  20. Hartmann, S.: Packing problems and project scheduling models: an integrating perspective. Journal of the Operational Research Society 51 (1 September 2000) 1083-1092(10)
  21. Martello, S., Toth, P.: Knapsack problems: algorithms and computer implementations. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, NY, USA (1990)
  22. Schwindt, C.: Resource Allocation in Project Management. Springer-Verlag Berlin and Heidelberg GmbH & Co. K (2005)
  23. Mathworks: Matlab homepage. (2008) Accessed on 28 May 2008.
  24. Multilogic: Multilogic homepage. URL: http://www.multilogic.hu (2008)
  25. Kellner, M., Madachy, R., Raffo, D.: Software process simulation modeling: Why? what? how? Journal of Systems and Software 46 (1999) 91-105
  26. Martinez, W.L.: Exploratory Data Analysis with MATLAB (Computer Science and Data Analysis). Chapman & Hall/CRC (2004)
  27. Shao, J.: Mathematical Statistics: Exercises and Solutions. Springer (2005)
  28. Tukel, O.I., Rom, W.O., Eksioglu, S.D.: An investigation of buffer sizing techniques in critical chain scheduling. European Journal of Operational Research 172 (2006) 401-416
  29. Berander, P., Andrews, A.: Requirements Prioritization. In: Engineering and Managing Software Requirements. Springer-Verlag, Inc., Secaucus, NJ, USA (2005) pp.69-94
  30. 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 (2007) 3-33
  31. Ruhe, G., Saliu, M.: The art and science of software release planning. Software, IEEE 22 (Nov.-Dec. 2005) 47-53
  32. Marjan van den Akker, Sjaak Brinkemper, G.D.J.V.: Software product release planning through optimization and what-if analysis. Technical Report UU-CS-2006-063 (2006)
  33. Szoke, A.: A proposed method for release planning from use case-based requirements. In: Proceedings of the 34th Euromicro Conference. Euromicro SEAA, Parma, Italy, IEEE Computer Society (2008) 449-456 ISBN: 978-0-7695-3276-9.
Download


Paper Citation


in Harvard Style

Szőke Á. (2009). Agile Release Planning through Optimization . In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering - Volume 1: ENASE, ISBN 978-989-811-98-2, pages 149-160. DOI: 10.5220/0001865001490160


in Bibtex Style

@conference{enase09,
author={Ákos Szőke},
title={Agile Release Planning through Optimization},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering - Volume 1: ENASE,},
year={2009},
pages={149-160},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0001865001490160},
isbn={978-989-811-98-2},
}


in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering - Volume 1: ENASE,
TI - Agile Release Planning through Optimization
SN - 978-989-811-98-2
AU - Szőke Á.
PY - 2009
SP - 149
EP - 160
DO - 10.5220/0001865001490160