S. Bhalerao et al /International Journal on Computer Science and Engineering Vol.

1(3), 2009, 222-226

Generalizing Agile Software Development Life Cycle

S. Bhalerao1, D. Puntambekar2 M.Ingle
Master of Computer Applications School of computer Science and Information Technology
Acropolis Institute of Technology and research Devi Ahilya University
Indore, India Indore, India
1
Bhalerao.shilpa@gmail.com, maya_ingle@rediffmail.com
2
d_puntamberkar@rediffmail.com

Abstract— In last decade, various agile methods have been agile approach to development [5]. Attempts have been made
introduced and used by software industry. It has been observed to reconcile the AMs with plan driven methods [6]. Still, there
that many practitioners are using hybrid of agile methods and is lack of a generalized Agile Software Development Life
traditional methods. The knowledge of agile software Cycle (ASDLC) for AMs that include complete agile
development process about the theoretical grounds, applicability principles and practices as whole. Therefore, in this paper, we
in large development settings and connections to establish
software engineering disciplines remain mostly in dark. It has
have proposed ASDLC and also discuss the documents or
been reported that it is difficult for average manager to artifacts required to produce in particular phase. It is highly
implement agile method in the organization. Further, every agile beneficial to identify the activities and practices associated
method has its own development cycle that brings technological, with particular phase of software development. Knowledge of
managerial and environmental changes in organization. A proper ASDLC is also useful to reduce the ratio of experienced
roadmap of agile software development in the form of agile member and inexperienced members in team. This will be
software development life cycle can be developed to address the highly useful for generating trust in industry about Agile
aforesaid issues of agile software development process. Thus, Software Development Process (ASDP).
there is strong need of agile software development life cycle that
clearly defines the phases included in any agile method and also
describes the artifacts of each phase. This generalization of agile
In this paper, firstly, we will discuss ASDP and research in
software development life cycle provides the guideline for this area with their pros and cons in Section 2. Secondly, we
average developers about usability, suitability, applicability of will propose the generalized ASDLC in Section 3. Section 3
agile methods. also includes the activities and document produced in various
phases. Lastly, conclusion and future scope is drawn in
Keywords-Agile software Development; extreme Programming; ASDLC in Section 4.
Adaptive software developmen; Scrum; Agile Method;story.

I. INTRODUCTION II. BACKGROUND

Agile Methods (AMs) have been adopted by many IT Many software development methods/ models have been
organizations and have generated many quality products of proposed since the evolution of software. Some development
software industry. These methods have gained higher edge on models had shown remarkable success in stable and
traditional software development by accommodating predictable environment. At the same time, these models have
frequently changing requirements in high tight schedules [1]. proven to be one of the major causes of failure in disruptive
AMs have promised higher customer satisfaction, low defect software development. In internet and mobile technology,
rates, higher usability and a solution to higher changing frequent changes in requirements, technology and staff have
requirements [2]. AMs include mainly; Extreme Programming been observed [7]. Thus, software development process has
(XP), Scrum, Feature Driven Development (FDD), Crystal become more cumbersome in such environment. Traditional
methodology, Dynamic System Driven Development Software Development Methods (TSDMs) are proven to be
(DSDM), Adaptive Software Development (ASD), Open unsuccessful and software success rate of TSDMs is less than
Source (OS), Agile Modeling (AM), and Pragmatic 40% in such environments [8]. A new way of software
Programming (PP) [3]. It has been observed that all aforesaid development i.e. agile software development is outcome of the
methods are based on agile manifesto and have their own frustration of many practitioners using TSDMs. In last decade,
software development life cycle for improving productivity a number of AMs have been evolved based on Agile
and quality of software [4]. It has been noticed that Manifesto established in 2001[www.agilemanifesto.org]. It
applicability of these methods is mainly in small software with has been observed that agile principles and practices ensure
low life critical systems. Many opponents have claimed that the customer satisfaction by involving the customer in all the
agile software development is set of ad-hoc practices and does phases of software development. It emphasizes mainly;
not have sound principles behind it. Further, it has been stated accommodating last minute changes, delivering working
by many software researchers that it is hard for average software, individual interactions etc.
software developer/ manager to understand and manage entire

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TABLE I. SUMMARY OF SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT LIFE CYCLE OF III. AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT LIFE CYCLLE
POPULAR AGILE METHODS
(ASDLC)
Sr. Method Phases Description
no Proposed generalized Agile Software Development Life
1 XP Exploration Write story for current iteration Cycle (ASDLC) is designed on the basis of common practices
Iteration Panning Prioritize Stories, effort and resource and principles used in all existing AMs. We have defined
estimates various phases in ASDP and activities performed in each
Iteration to release Analysis, design, coding, testing
phase along with artifacts required in each phase. Complete
Production Rigors testing,
Maintenance Customer supports, release for ASDLC is shown in Fig. 1 and discussed as follows:
customer use
Death Phase No more requirements
A. Vision and Project Approval
2 Scrum Pre-game Preparation of product backlog list ASDLC starts with the vision or inception phase that deals
,effort assessment, high level with the need of new system by analyzing problems in existing
architectural design
system. Management, product manager, users and team
Development Sprints, analysis, design, delivery,
Post game System testing, integration testing, members establish the scope and boundary conditions of
documentation releases proposed system. At this level, objective is apparent but the
3 FDD Develop over all Scope, features, model, use cases are features fulfilling the objectives may be uncertain. Main
model decided in various iterations objective of this phase is to identify critical uses of the system,
Build the feature Feature list is prepared
list
level of uncertainty of the system, overall estimation of size
Plan by feature Not clearly specified and duration of the system using algorithmic or non-
Design by feature Not clearly specified algorithmic approach. Further, systematic analysis is
Build by feature performed to identify the feasibility of the system at
4 DSDM Feasibility Study Feasibility of the system is assessed operational and economical level with clear specified
Business Study Essential business and technology
characters are analyzed
requirements. It is concerned with technical possibility of the
Functional model Analysis, functionality prioritization, system with incurring risk associated with it. At same level,
iteration nonfunctional requirements and risk feasibility of particular AM is assessed. This assessment is
assessment. based on project type, and personnel and organizational issues
Design and build Build and testing of system etc. Business study of the system is required to analyze the
iteration
Implementation Actual production of the system essential characteristics of the business and technology. For
5 ASD Speculate Project initiation, adaptive cycle example, a website for income tax submission must require its
planning technicalities involved in it. Major objective of business study
Collaborate Concurrent component eng. is identification of class of affected users. This affected class
Learn Review, F/A, Release of users is useful source of information in software
development cycle. It has been noticed that early estimation is
AMs are people centric and believe in short iterations and useful in project approval.
small releases to get feedback on the working software. This It is a non iterative phase and generally completed in two-
feedback is useful in improving the quality of the software. It three weeks time. High level description of the system, early
has been noticed that each AM has individual software estimates are mandatory documents produced in this phase.
development life cycle and characteristics. For example, XP
possesses five phases namely; exploration, iteration plan, B. Exploration Phase
iteration to release, production phase and death phase. On Exploration phase is an iterative and incremental phase to
other hand, DSDM and other methods follow different phases reduce the uncertainty and ambiguities in requirements by
of life cycle. XP emphasizes on customer involvement in continuous meeting of stakeholders in the form of workshops
every activity of software development and lacking in and brainstorming. Some of the AMs have preferred customer
management practices whereas Scrum mainly deals with the as team member but proposed ASDLC recommends the
project management activities [2]. Although, all these methods maximum communication between team and customer to
use perform analysis, design, coding, and implementation in resolve the requirement related issues by using any preferred
iterative and incremental manner. Table 1 represents the mode of communication between customer and team [9].
popular AMs with phases and details. It is clear from the Table Requirements may be captured in form of stories and
1 that DSDM not only stresses on development but also documented in story cards that can be referred for future
includes the feasibility and business study. Further, it has references. Typical format of story cards contains information
about author, story id, story description, further changes in
been noticed by many researchers that AMs do not follow all
story and details of related stories etc. [9]. Artifacts produced
the phases of software development life cycle [3]. Some are informal requirements description in the form of stories.
researchers have attempted to include missing phases of SDLC Team starts with selected experienced team members on agile
in existing AMs [9]. However, there is strong need to define software development. Selected team members start
generalized agile software development life cycle to increase communicating with the customers to understand the problems
the understandability of agile practices and principle to and requirements of the proposed system. Generally, while
increase the use of these methods. experienced team members are working on requirements,

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Rigors
Requirement Feedback Testing
Early
Gathering
Scope Requirements
prioritization Code
Iterative
Estimates inspection
Pre-
release
Vision & Exploration
Approval phase
Iteration Plan
A D C T

Feasibility Early Review

& Business Design Production
Estimates feedback
Study inspection
Team
Training Feedback
Feedback

Initial Acceptance
Architecture Unit Integration Testing
Testing Testing

Fig. 1 Agile Software Development Life Cycle

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inexperienced team members have been trained on agile one of aforesaid practices leads to just enough, simple and
process and technology used for training and enhance the ways understandable documents. System has been inherently
to improve quality of product being developed. Further, designed to change. For example, system can work for any
feedback of the last release is also accommodated in this phase database. This type of independency of code and design
and major changes in the last releases are defined as new provide lesser burden when changes are triggered. Thus,
requirements. ASDP use design patterns to maintain low coupling and high
cohesion among modules. Functionality testing and rigorous
C. Iteration Planning integration testing is performed by team of customer and
Iteration planning is most important phase of ASDLC and developers before release the product. Main activities of this
possesses many activities of software development required to phase are simple designing, maintaining coding standards and
schedule the project. First activity in this respect is review of rigors testing by Test Driven Development (TDD) and
the working software released in last iteration. Participants functional testing. Extra care is taken to design a code simply
assess the progress and increment of the work product and by code and data re-factoring.
discuss the future plan of the project. At the same time, Major artifacts in this phase are design documents and
requirement prioritization is performed to get maximum ROI codes of system.
from working software. In iteration planning, list of
D. Release Phase
requirements in stack is updated depending on the feedback
and requirements received from customers. This list is This phase can be decomposed in two sub-phases namely;
reviewed for prioritization of requirements. Prioritization is pre-release and production as shown in Fig 1. Pre-release
based on various factors mainly; value, knowledge, financial phase recommends extra testing (i.e. integration and
returns etc. For example, a feature that requires team to acceptance testing) and checking of functional and non-
improve their technical skills has been developed in later stage functional requirements of the system to be released. It has
but a feature that has higher financial returns must be kept at been advised to include some minor changes expected by the
higher priority. This prioritization stack is useful in increasing user in the release and major changes are expected to
ROI and producing working software in shorter time period. accommodate in next iteration. On the other hand, production
Prioritization has been done for only those features that are phase deals with releasing the product for customer use. At
clear and unambiguous. Project manager, customer this time, training for users of the system is provided for
representative and team members sit together to decide the operation ease. It has been observed that team handles two
priority of requirements. Moreover, iteration plan phase responsibilities after first release of the system. Firstly, team is
possesses iterative estimation activity to estimate size, cost involved in enhancing the functionalities of product. Secondly,
and duration of the project. It also re-estimates efforts team has to take responsibility of system in running state
depending on team velocity [13]. thereby providing customer helpdesk.
This phase also ensures the resource requirements of the We have attempted to define the ASDLC after reviewing
system. Artifacts produced in this phase are prioritized stack the all phases of software development of existing AMs. We
requirements and set of requirements from the stack is selected have also included the phases introduced by other researchers
for current iteration. thereby increasing the trust and faith on agile software
development.
C. ADCT Phase
This phase is an iterative phase that deals with Analysis, IV. CONCLUSION
Design, Coding, and Testing (ADCT). In this phase, ASDP is process to handle the disruptive software
functionality of the system is produced and enhanced in new environment by incorporating practices and principles
increments. It requires several iterations before releasing the established in 2001. It has been observed that agile practices
product. Decided schedule in iteration planning is decomposed such as delivering working software, short iterations and
in several small iterations of one to four weeks. First iteration feedback etc. increase the internal and external software
develops the architecture of whole system by enforcing the quality. Some practitioners stated that agile practices are
selection of stories that form the system. In successive collection of best practices of the software development.
iterations, designing and coding along with testing is Although, there are many success stories of ASDP in last
performed. In last iteration, product is ready to deploy at decade, but knowledge of implementing these practices in a
customer site. It incorporates designing and coding with unit particular project is very scared. Therefore, we have analyzed
testing using the concept of pair programming. ASDP always software development life cycle of all existing AMs and
possesses simple design to incorporate changes in the proposed a generalized ASDLC. Proposed ASDLC is essence
requirements. Design guidelines include metaphors, CRC of all existing AMs and represents all phases required in a
cards, Spike solution and re-factoring. CRC card is an index software development cycle in iterative and incremental
card that is used to represent responsibilities, relations of manner. It also encourages the practices of simple design, re-
classes used in designing a particular story. Spike solution is factoring to maintain the simplicity. Thus, proposed work is
small focused effort used to explore solution to the problem. It useful for adoption of AMs with following benefits:
has been observed that adding more functionality in early
stages of the software leads to a poor design document. Any
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• ASDLC is a step towards resolving the [11] Dingsøyr, T., Dybå, T., and Abrahamsson, P., ”A Preliminary Roadmap
for Empirical Research on Agile Software Development”, In Proceedings of
misconceptions about AMs that these methods are ad- Agile Conference 2008
hoc coding practices.
[12] Pressman, R., Software Engineering A Practitioner Guide, McGraw- Hill
• A systematic approach to define all the phases of 6th Edition.
ASDP that is useful to average project manager to [13] Bhalerao, S., and Ingle, M., A Comparative Study of Agile Projects
understand the principles and practices behind agility. Estimation using CAEA, In Proceedings of International Conference on
Computer Engineering and Application, June 2009, Philippines.
• ASDLC represents the activities and document
[14] Cao L. and Balasubramanium R., “ Agile Software Development: Ad-hoc
required in each phase thereby providing the Practices or Sound Principles ?”, IEEE ITPRO, March- April 2007, pp. 41-46.
developer and user view for better understanding of
AMs. [15] Iacovelli A. and Souveyer C., “Framework for Agile Method
Classification”, Proceedings of Model Driven Information System Driven
Engineering- Enterprise, User and System Model (MoDISE –EUS) 2008, pp.
• ASDLC provides flexibility to handle phases in 91-102.
concurrent and iterative manner.
AUTHORS PROFILE
• Feedback in ADCT phase improves internal quality
whereas feedback in iteration planning improves Prof. S. Bhalerao is MCA from Banasthali Viyapeeth, Rajasthan and persuing
her research in standardization of agile methods to increase trust and
external quality of the product. faith amongst practitioners under the guidance of Dr. M. Ingle
Professor, DAU, India. She has published more than 15 papers in
national and international confereces and journals. She got IT excellence
Thus, proposed ASDLC is a step towards improving agile award for improving education standards in central India
software development which will leads to fast accessibility of
AMs. However, this is preliminary work and needs Prof. D. Puntambekar is MCA from DAVV, Indore with about 20 years of
Industrial and Academic experience. He has published more than 25
verification on large projects. research papers in national and internation Conferences. He is also
consultant to many Govt. agencies for E-Governance implementation.
He is being appointed as Director on the board of M.P. State Electronics
Development Corporation (MPSEDC) a State Govt. Enterprise.
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