Introducing agile methods in a large software development organisation: a case study

Abstract

The adoption of agile methods of software development has gained momentum within the software industry. NW Soft Solutions Ltd. (a pseudonym) is a large software development unit that develops large-scale network centric software solutions. NW Soft Solutions Ltd decided to adopt an agile development methodology. Martin Fowler in his article “The New Methodology”, states that in his opinion “Since agile methods are so fundamentally people-oriented, it's essential that you start with a team that wants to try and work in an agile way”. Using NW Soft Solutions as a case study, this thesis sets out to show how the developer’s attitudes towards agile methods change during the course of a transition from a more traditional waterfall methodology to agile methods. We see a shift in focus from agile practices at a superficial level towards the core values that underpin agile methods. Object-oriented metrics are used to evaluate and characterise the source code produced by teams using agile methods. The results obtained from the source code produced using agile methods are compared with the results for source code produced using a more traditional methodology. The contrast is stark. This case study shows that agile methods have guided the developers to produce code that manifests better quality and maintainability characteristics. Correlations between the degree of agility in a team and the characteristics of the code produced by that team are also explored.