1 Agile Software Development Succinctly By Stephen Haunts Foreword by Daniel Jebaraj 2 Copyright © 2015 by Syncfusion, Inc. 2501 Aerial Center Parkway Suite 200 Morrisville, NC 27560 USA All rights reserved. I mportant licensing information. Please read. This book is available for free download from www.syncfusion.com upon completion of a registration form. If you obtained this book from any other source, please register and download a free copy from www.syncfusion.com. This book is licensed for reading only if obtained from www.syncfusion.com. This book is licensed strictly for personal or educational use. Redistribution in any form is prohibited. The authors and copyright holders provide absolutely no warranty for any information provided. The authors and copyright holders shall not be liable for any claim, damages, or any other liability arising from, out of, or in connection with the information in this book. Please do not use this book if the listed terms are unacceptable. Use shall constitute acceptance of the terms listed. SYNCFUSION, SUCCINCTLY, DELIVER INNOVATION WITH EASE, ESSENTIAL, and .NET ESSENTIALS are the registered trademarks of Syncfusion, Inc. Technical Reviewer: Peter Shaw Copy Editor: Courtney Wright Acquisitions Coordinator: Hillary Bowling, marketing coordinator, Syncfusion, Inc. Proofreader: Darren West, content producer, Syncfusion, Inc. 3 Table of Contents The Story behind the Succinctly Series of Books .................................................................................. 6 About the Author ......................................................................................................................................... 8 Introduction ................................................................................................................................................. 9 Who Is This Book For? ............................................................................................................................ 9 Chapter 1 Waterfall Development and its Problems ............................................................................ 10 History of the Waterfall Model ................................................................................................................ 10 How Does Waterfall Work? .................................................................................................................... 10 Where Is Waterfall Suitable? ................................................................................................................. 11 Advantages and Disadvantages of Waterfall ......................................................................................... 12 History of the V-Model ........................................................................................................................... 14 How Does the V-Model Work? .............................................................................................................. 14 Where Is the V-Model Suitable? ............................................................................................................ 16 Advantages and Disadvantages of the V-Model ................................................................................... 16 Chapter 2 What Is Agile? ......................................................................................................................... 18 A Brief History of Agile ........................................................................................................................... 19 The Agile Manifesto Core Values .......................................................................................................... 19 Individuals and interactions over processes and tools ........................................................................ 20 Working software over comprehensive documentation ....................................................................... 20 Customer collaboration over contract negotiation ............................................................................... 20 Responding to change over following a plan ....................................................................................... 20 Agile Methodology Overview ................................................................................................................. 21 Roles Within an Agile Team................................................................................................................... 23 Summary ................................................................................................................................................ 23 Chapter 3 Common Agile Misconceptions and Mistakes .................................................................... 24 4 Common Agile Misconceptions ............................................................................................................. 24 Chapter 4 Advantages and Disadvantages ........................................................................................... 27 Advantages of Agile ............................................................................................................................... 27 Disadvantages of Agile .......................................................................................................................... 29 What Are Your Department's Biggest Challenges? ............................................................................... 30 Are You Prepared for Agile? .................................................................................................................. 31 Chapter 5 Extreme Programming (XP) ................................................................................................... 33 History of Extreme Programming ........................................................................................................... 33 Overview of Extreme Programming ....................................................................................................... 34 Activities ............................................................................................................................................... 34 Values .................................................................................................................................................. 35 Principles ............................................................................................................................................. 37 Practices .............................................................................................................................................. 38 Rules .................................................................................................................................................... 41 Extreme Programming Diagram ............................................................................................................ 48 Chapter 6 Scrum ...................................................................................................................................... 49 Definition and History of Scrum ............................................................................................................. 49 Overview of Scrum ................................................................................................................................. 50 Scrum Diagram .................................................................................................................................... 51 Scrum Roles ........................................................................................................................................ 52 Scrum Ceremonies .............................................................................................................................. 54 Scrum Artifacts ..................................................................................................................................... 55 Extreme Programming vs. Scrum .......................................................................................................... 57 Closing Summary ...................................................................................................................................... 59 5 The Story behind the Succinctly Series of Books Daniel Jebaraj, Vice President Syncfusion, Inc. S taying on the cutting edge As many of you may know, Syncfusion is a provider of software components for the Microsoft platform. This puts us in the exciting but challenging position of always being on the cutting edge. Whenever platforms or tools are shipping out of Microsoft, which seems to be about every other week these days, we have to educate ourselves, quickly. Information is plentiful but harder to digest In reality, this translates into a lot of book orders, blog searches, and Twitter scans. While more information is becoming available on the Internet and more and more books are being published, even on topics that are relatively new, one aspect that continues to inhibit us is the inability to find concise technology overview books. We are usually faced with two options: read several 500+ page books or scour the web for relevant blog posts and other articles. Just as everyone else who has a job to do and customers to serve, we find this quite frustrating. The Succinctly series This frustration translated into a deep desire to produce a series of concise technical books that would be targeted at developers working on the Microsoft platform. We firmly believe, given the background knowledge such developers have, that most topics can be translated into books that are between 50 and 100 pages. This is exactly what we resolved to accomplish with the Succinctly series. Isn’t everything wonderful born out of a deep desire to change things for the better? The best authors, the best content Each author was carefully chosen from a pool of talented experts who shared our vision. The book you now hold in your hands, and the others available in this series, are a result of the authors’ tireless work. You will find original content that is guaranteed to get you up and running in about the time it takes to drink a few cups of coffee. 6 Free forever Syncfusion will be working to produce books on several topics. The books will always be free. Any updates we publish will also be free. Free? What is the catch? There is no catch here. Syncfusion has a vested interest in this effort. As a component vendor, our unique claim has always been that we offer deeper and broader frameworks than anyone else on the market. Developer education greatly helps us market and sell against competing vendors who promise to “enable AJAX support with one click” or “turn the moon to cheese!” Let us know what you think If you have any topics of interest, thoughts or feedback, please feel free to send them to us at [email protected]. We sincerely hope you enjoy reading this book and that it helps you better understand the topic of study. Thank you for reading. Please follow us on Twitter and “Like” us on Facebook to help us spread the word about the Succinctly series! 7 About the Author Stephen Haunts has been developing software and applications professionally since 1996, and as a hobby since he was 10 years old. Stephen has worked across many different industries including computer gaming, online banking, retail finance, healthcare, and pharmaceuticals. Stephen started out programming in BASIC on machines such as the Dragon 32, Vic 20, and the Amiga, and moved onto C and C++ on the IBM PC. He has been developing software in C# and the .NET framework since first being introduced to it in 2003. In addition to being an accomplished software developer, Stephen is an experienced development leader and has led, mentored, and coached teams to deliver many high-value, high-impact solutions in finance and healthcare. Outside of Stephen’s day job, he runs a popular blog called “Coding in the Trenches” at www.stephenhaunts.com, and he is a training course author for the popular online training company Pluralsight. Stephen also runs several open-source projects including SafePad, Text Shredder, Block Encrpytor, and Smoke Tester—the post-deployment testing tool. Stephen is also an accomplished electronic musician and sound designer. 8 Introduction Who Is This Book For? This book will appeal to many different audiences. If you are a developer, then this book will give you a good understanding of why Agile is beneficial to you, your team, and your employer. This might be the first Agile project that you've worked on, and you want to understand why you're using Agile over Waterfall. This book will also be a good refresher on why you're using Agile if you're already on an Agile project. If you're a project manager, then this book will help you understand the difference between an Agile project and the more traditional Waterfall project. As teams become more self-directed when working on a project, a project manager is still crucial to help ensure the teams are run correctly and deliver on time and budget. If you're an IT or business leader and your company is considering adopting Agile, this book will help you understand how this will work and what the benefits are to your organization. This book covers six main areas:  Waterfall development and its problems  What is Agile all about?  Common Agile misconceptions  Advantages and disadvantages  Extreme Programming (XP)  Scrum 9 Chapter 1 Waterfall Development and its Problems History of the Waterfall Model The Waterfall software development process was introduced computer scientist Winston Royce in 1970. Royce first wrote about Waterfall in an article called, Managing the Development of Large Software Systems. Although Royce didn't directly refer to his model as Waterfall, the article was actually about a process that was flawed for software development. Royce's model allowed for more repetition between stages of the model, which Waterfall doesn't allow you to do. Royce's actual model was more iterative in how it worked and allowed more room to maneuver between stages. We will discuss a more iterative way of working when we discuss Agile later on in this book. Although Royce didn't refer to his model as the Waterfall model directly, he is credited with the first description of what we refer to as the Waterfall model. Royce's original article consists of the following stages, which we'll go into more detail on in a moment. Those stages are:  Requirements Specification  Detail Design  Construction, where developers start crafting code  Integration, where all the code is brought together and compiled into a run-able solution  Testing and Debugging, where your testing will try to find defects that the developers will fix  Installation, where you deploy your system so that it can be used by your end users.  Maintenance, where you fix any issues that are raised by the users. How Does Waterfall Work? The Waterfall process is split into separate stages, where the outcome of one stage is the input for the next stage. In the first stage, Requirements Specification, all possible requirements for the system to be developed are captured and documented in a requirement specification document. This document normally requires sign-off by key project and business stakeholders. This part of the Waterfall model is typically organized by the business analysts, but depending on the size of your project, team, or organization, other members of your development team may be involved. This stage is about teasing out the requirements of the system from your stakeholders. This would include the required functionality, documentation of business rules and processes, and capturing any regulatory and compliance requirements that will affect the overall system. 10