Feb 22 2010

Agile Software Development

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Agile processes are one of the most exciting things to happen in software development in the last decade.  There were a number of early beginnings, and these led to the articulation of several different processes. Perhaps the best known are Scrum, and Extreme Programming (XP) which despite its name has a wider and deeper agenda than just programming.  When the creators of the various new approaches got together, they found a lot to agree on, summarized in their 2001 Manifesto for Agile Software Development:

We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:

-Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
-Working software over comprehensive documentation
-Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
-Responding to change over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.

Agile processes are still new, and there is much to be done in determining what works well and when. In particular, there is a need to explore the relationship between agile processes, user interaction, teamwork, and value.  These are the elements in the “human side of agile development”: the focus of our research work.
Faculty

Colleagues

Recent Tutorials

  • Dormann, Biddle: Understanding cultural differences on agile projects, OOPSLA 2009 (Orlando)
  • Dormann, Biddle: Understanding cultural differences on agile projects, Agile  2009 (Chicago)
  • Biddle: Activity theory for manifesting agile, Agile 2009 (Chicago)
  • Dormann, Biddle: Understanding cultural differences on agile projects, OOPSLA 2008 (Nashville)
  • Dormann, Biddle: Understanding cultural differences on agile projects, Agile 2007 (Washington)
  • Martin, Biddle, Noble: Working With Customers on Agile Projects, Agile 2007, OOPLSA 2006 (Portland)
  • Noble, Biddle: Metaphor and Stories for Customer-Developer Communication, XPDay 2006 (London)

Recent Publications

  • Stevenson Gossage, Judith M. Brown, Robert Biddle. Understanding Digital Cardwall Usage. Proceedings of Agile 2015. IEEE. Washington DC, USA.
  • Ravina Samaroo, Judith Brown, Steven Greenspan, and Robert Biddle. Day in the life: A method for documenting user experience in complex environments. In Emerging Technologies for a Smarter World (CEWIT), 2013 10th International Conference Expo on, pages 1–6. IEEE, 2013.
  • Jeff Wilson, Judith Brown, and Robert Biddle. Distributed data and displays via SVG and HTML5. In Distributed User Interfaces, London, 2013. ACM.
  • Judith M. Brown, Steven Greenspan, and Robert Biddle. Complex activities in an operations center: A case study and model for engineering interaction. In Engineering Interactive Computing Systems (EICS2013), London, 2013. ACM.
  • Craig Anslow, Stuart Marshall, James Noble, and Robert Biddle. Sourcevis: Collaborative software visualization for co-located environments. In Working Conference on Software Visualization (VISSOFT 2013), Eindhoven, Netherlands, 2013. IEEE.
  • Judith M. Brown, Gitte Lindgaard, and Robert Biddle. Joint implicit alignment work of interaction designers and software developers. In Proceedings of the 7th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Making Sense Through Design, NordiCHI ’12, pages 693–702, New York, NY, USA, 2012. ACM.
  • Steven Greenspan, Judith Brown, and Robert Biddle. The human in the center: Agile decision- making in complex operations and command center. CA Labs Research, page 12, 2012.
  • Judith M. Brown, Gitte Lindgaard, and Robert Biddle. Interactional identity: designers and devel- opers making joint work meaningful and effective. In Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, CSCW ’12, pages 1381–1390, New York, NY, USA, 2012. ACM.
  • Judith M. Brown, Gitte Lindgaard, and Robert Biddle. Collaborative events and shared artefacts: Agile interaction designers and developers working toward common aims. In IEEE Agile Software Development Conference. IEEE, 2011.
  • Angela Martin, James Noble and Robert Biddle. An Ideal Customer: A Grounded Theory of Requirements Elicitation, Communication and Acceptance on Agile Projects, in Agile Software Development: Current Research and Future Directions, Nils Brede Moe, Tore Dybå and Torgeir Dingsøyr (Editors), Springer, 2010.
  • Angela Martin, James Noble, and Robert Biddle. XP customer practices: A grounded theory. In
    Proceedings of the Agile Software Development Conference (Agile2009), Chicago, USA, 2009. IEEE.
  • Angela Martin, James Noble, and Robert Biddle. The XP customer team: A grounded theory. In
    Proceedings of the Agile Software Development Conference (Agile2009), Chicago, USA, 2009. IEEE.
  • Judith Brown, Gitte Lindgaard, and Robert Biddle. Stories, sketches, and lists: Developers and interaction designers interacting through artefacts. Agile, 2008. AGILE ’08. Conference, pages 39–50, Aug. 2008.
  • Judith Brown, Gitte Lindgaard, and Robert Biddle. Analyzing talk and artefact mediated interactions from a cultutal historical psychology perspective. In Proceedings of ISCAR 2008, San Diego, CA, USA, 2008. International Society for Cultural and Activity Research.
  • Jennifer Ferreira, James Noble, and Robert Biddle. Up-front interaction design in agile development. In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on eXtreme Programming and Agile Processes in Software Engineering. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag, 2007.
  • Jennifer Ferreira, James Noble, and Robert Biddle. Agile development iterations and ui design. In Proceedings of the Agile Software Development Conference, Washington D.C., 2007. IEEE.
  • Elizabeth Whitworth and Robert Biddle. Motivation and cohesion in agile teams. In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on eXtreme Programming and Agile Processes in Software Engineering. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag, 2007.
  • Elizabeth Whitworth and Robert Biddle. The social nature of agile teams. In Proceedings of the Agile Software Development Conferennce,Washington D.C., 2007. IEEE.
  • Angela Martin, James Noble, and Robert Biddle. Programmers and from mars, customers are from venus. In Proceedings of Pattern Languages of Programming, Portland, Oregon, 2006.
  • James Noble, Stuart Marshall, Stephen Marshall, and Robert Biddle.
    Less extreme programming. In Raymond Lister and Alison Young, editors, Proceedings of the Australasian Computing Education Conference, Conferences in Research and Practice in Information Technology, Vol 30, Dunedin, New Zealand, 2004. Australian Computer Society.
  • Rilla Khaled, Pippin Barr, James Noble, and Robert Biddle. System metaphor in extreme programming: A semiotic approach. In International Workshop on Organisational Semiotics, pages 152-172, Setubal, Portugal, 2004. INSTICC Press.
  • Angela Martin, James Noble, Charles Weir, and Robert Biddle. My friend the  customer. In Klaus Marquardt, editor, Ninth European Conference on Pattern Languages of Programming, page NA, Irsee, Germany, 2004.
  • Angela Martin, Robert Biddle, and James Noble. The XP customer role in practice: Three studies. In Proceedings of the Second Agile Development Conference, Sherman Alpert (Ed.), pages 42–54, Salt Lake City, USA, 2004. ACM SIGSOFT.
  • Angela Martin, James Noble, and Robert Biddle. Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on eXtreme Programming and Agile Processes in Software Engineering, Giancarlo Succi (Ed.), chapter Being Jane Malkovich: a Look into the World of an XP Customer, pages 234–243. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag, 2003.

Drafts of some publications are available from the websites of : Angela Martin, Jennifer Ferreira, and Elizabeth Whitworth.

We have also offer Tutorials and Workshops on the Customer Role and UI Design in Agile Development, typically at conferences such as
OOPSLA, XP200X, Agile200X. We have also organized workshops in Canada for the Canadian Agile Network.