Agile software development - Assignment Example

AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT Agile software development Affiliation Identify issues at the core of the apparent incompatibilitybetween CMMI and Agile. Is the incompatibility real?Without a doubt, companies always look for tools, techniques or methodologies to improve the effectiveness of their projects. In some cases, they adopt a model such as the Capabilities Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) which was developed to determine several levels of maturity of a firm, however this model applies to development processes.

Both CMMI and agile software development are different from each other. For instance, CMMI is a model that is used to determine the level of a process adopted by an organization for the development of software applications. On the other hand, agile software development methodology is a software development process that is aimed at developing a software application quickly and allowing for late changes. In addition, CMMI heavily relies on documentation and everything is properly documented when CMMI is being adopted.

However, agile software development approach relies on minimum documentation because its focus is on the development. Though, both agile and CMMI have their advantages and disadvantages and the research has shown that if they are implemented effectively, they can work jointly and can play a significant role in the improvement of software development. In fact, principles and practices offered by the agile software development approach ensures critical, long-standing process improvement, hence making it a perfect partner of the CMMI model, which provides an excellent structure of an organization-wide, effectively trained nonstop optimization and improvement.

Hence, it can be said that there is no incompatibility between CMMI and agile. In fact, the mixture of both CMMI and Agile complete each other’s capabilities as well as can lead to quick, reasonable, observable, and the continuing benefits (Ropa, 2014; Glazer, 2010).2. Show how you would do a cost-benefit tradeoff in determining whether to use automated testing in an Agile projectIn view of the fact that in the agile software development the programming starts immediately and the testing phase remains active throughout the programming.

In this scenario, the software testers have to perform a variety of testing techniques again and again. So the automation of these tests becomes essential. In fact, agile development cannot be successful without automating its testing phase. However, the decision about which tests need to be automated is taken while planning for a given user story. At this stage, testers and developers work collaboratively to determine where automation can be used to activate acceptance/signal completion of the story.

Without a doubt, automated testing is really a precondition to becoming a truthfully agile team. In addition, automated tests offer quick feedback as compared to a manual test, as a result minimizing revision and long feedback cycles. In this scenario, if return on investment is developing high-quality software iteratively, then yes sure, automated testing provides an excellent return on investment (SmartBear Software, 2013).3. Argue for or against using test-driven development in the Agile context.

Balance your argument with at least as much quantitative support as qualitative support.In the test-driven development, software development team must first write a test and in case of its failure, they need to write a new functional code. In fact, the majority of agile software developers has swiftly accepted it for development of application source code as well as agile database developers have adopted for database development. It is an admitted fact that test driven development is not an alternative to traditional testing, in its place it is believed to be an excellent way to certify effective unit testing.

Additionally, in practical scenario test driven development works extremely well as well as it is an excellent practice that should be adopted by all the software developers. One of the most important advantages of test driven development is that it allows software developers to write a software code in small steps. This practice has proven to be very successful for the reason that it is far more fruitful than attempting to write software code in large steps (Ambler, 2013).4. Describe the relationship between user stories and quality assurance.

Without a doubt, user story is an excellent practice for determining and identifying what the user needs, however, it does not determine what the user does and how the system responds to user actions within different contexts. On the other hand, a quality assurance expert cannot test the software functionality from user stories for the reason that a user story does not cover the sequence of events, the context, and all possible system reactions. In this scenario, user stories do not play a considerable role in quality however they only help software development team determine the amount of work as well as it helps finance team get a view on budget of the project people are talking about (Zabir, 2011; Hasija, 2012).

ReferencesAmbler, S. (2013). Introduction to Test Driven Development (TDD). Retrieved from http://www.agiledata.org/essays/tdd.html#PartingThoughtsGlazer, H. (2010). Love and Marriage: CMMI and Agile Need Each Other. The Journal of Defense Software Engineering, 29-34.Hasija, P. (2012, July 17). My Experience as a QA in Scrum. Retrieved from InfoQ.com: http://www.infoq.com/articles/experience-qa-scrumRopa, S. (2014). AGILE AND CMMI: FRIENDS OR ENEMIES? . Retrieved from VersionOne, Inc.: http://www.

versionone.com/White_Papers/Agile-and-CMMI/SmartBear Software. (2013). Automated Testing in Agile Environments. Retrieved from http://support.smartbear.com/articles/testcomplete/automated-testing-agile-environment/Zabir, O. A. (2011, June 11). User Story is Worthless, Behavior is What We Need. Retrieved from CodeProject: http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/98328/User-Story-is-Worthless-Behavior-is-What-We-Need