American Journal of Software Engineering and Applications

| Peer-Reviewed |

Do Agile Methods Increase Productivity and Quality

Received: 28 February 2014    Accepted: 16 April 2014    Published: 20 April 2014
Views:       Downloads:

Share This Article

Abstract

The Agile methods popped up in the history of software development methods as a solution to several frequent problems, but what is still not clear is whether they produce a significant improvement in productivity and quality or not, if they are compared to the traditional software development methods. In order to clarify this issue and contribute to a better understanding of these methods, we designed an empirical study in which Agile and traditional methods were compared in an academic context. By applying a traditional method to the development of software products, we managed to obtain a more reproducible result, though we could not obtain evidence of an improvement in quality. On the contrary, by applying an Agile method, we obtained evidence of higher productivity, but with a significant dispersion, an aspect that would be interesting to analyze in future studies

DOI 10.11648/j.ajsea.20140301.11
Published in American Journal of Software Engineering and Applications (Volume 3, Issue 1, February 2014)
Page(s) 1-11
Creative Commons

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright

Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Agile, Rup, Scrum, Productivity, Quality, Extreme Programming

References
[1] M. A. Chaumun, H. Kabaili, R. K. Keller and F. Lustman, A Change Impact Model for Changeability Assessment in Object-Oriented Software Systems, csmr, Third European Conference on Software Maintenance and Reengineering, (1999), pp.130.
[2] S. Nerur, R. Mahapatra and G. Mangalaraj, Challenges of migrating to agile methodologies. Commun. ACM 48, 5 (May 2005), 72-78. DOI=10.1145/1060710.1060712 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1060710.1060712.
[3] T. Dyba and T. Dingsøyr: Empirical Studies of Agile Software Development: A Systematic Review, Inform. Softw. Technol (2008).
[4] M. Hirsch, Moving from a plan driven culture to agile development, in Proceedings of the 27th international Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE '05) (St. Louis, MO, USA, May 15 - 21, 2005). ACM Press, NY, 38-38.
[5] T. Dingsøyr, S. Nerur, V. Balijepally, N. Brede Moe, A decade of agile methodologies: Towards explaining agile software development, Journal of Systems and Software, Volume 85, Issue 6, (June 2012), pp. 1213-1221, ISSN 0164-1212, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2012.02.033.
[6] E. Caballero, J.A. Calvo-Manzano and T. San Feliu, Introducing Scrum in a Very Small Enterprise: A Productivity and Quality Analysis, Systems, Software and Service Process Improvement, Communications in Computer and Information Science Volume 172, (2011), pp. 215-224.
[7] E. S. F. Cardozo, J. B. F. Araújo Neto, A. Barza, A. C. C. França, and F. Q. B. da Silva, SCRUM and productivity in software projects: a systematic literature review, in Proceedings of the 14th international conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering (EASE'10), Mark Turner and Mahmood Niazi (Eds.), British Computer Society (Swinton, UK, UK, 2010),131-134.
[8] P. Sfetsos and I.Stamelos, Empirical Studies on Quality in Agile Practices: A Systematic Literature Review, Quality of Information and Communications Technology (QUATIC), 2010 Seventh International Conference, (Porto, Sept. 29 2010-Oct. 2 2010),44 – 53.
[9] J. Sutherland, G. Schoonheim, M. Rijk, Fully Distributed Scrum: Replicating Local Productivity and Quality with Offshore Teams, Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (2009), pp. 1-8, 42.
[10] L. Lavazza, S. Morasca, D. Taibi and D. Tosi, Applying SCRUM in an OSS Development Process: An Empirical Evaluation, Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming, Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing Volume 48, 2010, pp 147-159.
[11] J. Li, N. B. Moe, and T. Dyba˚, Transition from a plan-driven process to Scrum: a longitudinal case study on software quality, in Proceedings of the 2010 ACM-IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM '10), ACM Article 13, (New York, NY, USA, 2010), 10 pages.
[12] K. Bittner and I. Spence, Use Case modeling (Addison-Wesley, 2003).
[13] S.I. Hashmi, J.Baik, Software Quality Assurance in XP and Spiral - A Comparative Study International, Conference on Computational Science and its Applications, (ICCSA 2007), (2007), 367 - 374
[14] M. Mirakhorli, A. Khanipour Rad, F. Shams, M. Pazoki, and A. Mirakhorli, RDP technique: a practice to customize xp, In Proceedings of the 2008 international workshop on Scrutinizing agile practices or shoot-out at the agile corral (APOS '08), ACM, (New York, NY, USA, 2008), 23-32.
[15] S.E Goldin and K.T Rudahl, Software process in the classroom: A comparative study, 9th International Symposium on Communications and Information Technology (ISCIT 2009), (28-30 Sept. 2009), 427 – 431.
[16] W.C. de Souza Carvalho, P.F. Rosa, M. dos Santos Soares and M.A. Teixeira da Cunha Junior, A Comparative Analysis of the Agile and Traditional Software Development Processes Productivity, Computer Science Society (SCCC), 2011 30th International Conference of the Chilean, (2011), 74 – 82.
[17] N. Juristo, and A.M. Moreno, Basics of Software Engineering Experimentation, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001.
[18] C.Wohlin, P.Runeson, M.Höst, M.C.Ohlsson, B. Regnell, and A. Wesslen, Experimentation in Software Engineering: an Introduction, Kluwer Academic Publisher (2000).
[19] Jedlitschka, M. Ciolkowoski, D. Pfahl, Reporting Experiments in Software Engineering, In Guide to Advanced Empirical Software Engineering (2008).
[20] Basili, G. Caldiera and D. Rombach, The Goal Question Metrics Approach, Encyclopedia of Software, Engineering, Wiley, 1994.
[21] ISO/IEC, ISO/IEC 9126-1 Software engineering- Product quality- Part 1: Quality model, 2001.
[22] Parnas, D.L., On the criteria to be used in decomposing systems into modules, Communications of the ACM. Volume 15, Issue 12 (December 1972) 1053 – 1058
[23] Deligiannis, M. Shepperd, M. Roumeliotis, and I. Stamelos, An empirical investigation of an object-oriented design heuristic for maintainability. J. Syst. Softw. 65, 2 (February 2003), 127-139.
[24] G. Robiolo, C. Badano and R. Orosco, Transactions and Paths: two use case based metrics which improve the early effort estimation, In Proceedings of 3rd Int. Symp. on Empirical SW Engineering and Measurement (ESEM 2009) (October S., Lake Buena Vista, Florida, 2009), 15-16.
[25] Jacobson and B. Grady, J. Rumbaugh, The Unified Software Development Process, (Addison Wesley, 1999)
[26] K. Schwaber, Agile Project Management with Scrum. Microsoft Press (2004).
[27] N. Zazworka, K. Stapel, E. Knauss, F. Shull, V. R. Basili, and K. Schneider. Are developers complying with the process: an XP study, in Proceedings of the 2010 ACM-IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM '10). ACM, Article 14 (New York, NY, USA, 2010), 10 pages.
Author Information
  • Informatica, Universidad Austral, Buenos Aires, Argentina

  • Informatica, Universidad Austral, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Cite This Article
  • APA Style

    Gabriela Robiolo, Daniel Grane. (2014). Do Agile Methods Increase Productivity and Quality. American Journal of Software Engineering and Applications, 3(1), 1-11. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajsea.20140301.11

    Copy | Download

    ACS Style

    Gabriela Robiolo; Daniel Grane. Do Agile Methods Increase Productivity and Quality. Am. J. Softw. Eng. Appl. 2014, 3(1), 1-11. doi: 10.11648/j.ajsea.20140301.11

    Copy | Download

    AMA Style

    Gabriela Robiolo, Daniel Grane. Do Agile Methods Increase Productivity and Quality. Am J Softw Eng Appl. 2014;3(1):1-11. doi: 10.11648/j.ajsea.20140301.11

    Copy | Download

  • @article{10.11648/j.ajsea.20140301.11,
      author = {Gabriela Robiolo and Daniel Grane},
      title = {Do Agile Methods Increase Productivity and Quality},
      journal = {American Journal of Software Engineering and Applications},
      volume = {3},
      number = {1},
      pages = {1-11},
      doi = {10.11648/j.ajsea.20140301.11},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajsea.20140301.11},
      eprint = {https://download.sciencepg.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ajsea.20140301.11},
      abstract = {The Agile methods popped up in the history of software development methods as a solution to several frequent problems, but what is still not clear is whether they produce a significant improvement in productivity and quality or not, if they are compared to the traditional software development methods. In order to clarify this issue and contribute to a better understanding of these methods, we designed an empirical study in which Agile and traditional methods were compared in an academic context. By applying a traditional method to the development of software products, we managed to obtain a more reproducible result, though we could not obtain evidence of an improvement in quality. On the contrary, by applying an Agile method, we obtained evidence of higher productivity, but with a significant dispersion, an aspect that would be interesting to analyze in future studies},
     year = {2014}
    }
    

    Copy | Download

  • TY  - JOUR
    T1  - Do Agile Methods Increase Productivity and Quality
    AU  - Gabriela Robiolo
    AU  - Daniel Grane
    Y1  - 2014/04/20
    PY  - 2014
    N1  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajsea.20140301.11
    DO  - 10.11648/j.ajsea.20140301.11
    T2  - American Journal of Software Engineering and Applications
    JF  - American Journal of Software Engineering and Applications
    JO  - American Journal of Software Engineering and Applications
    SP  - 1
    EP  - 11
    PB  - Science Publishing Group
    SN  - 2327-249X
    UR  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajsea.20140301.11
    AB  - The Agile methods popped up in the history of software development methods as a solution to several frequent problems, but what is still not clear is whether they produce a significant improvement in productivity and quality or not, if they are compared to the traditional software development methods. In order to clarify this issue and contribute to a better understanding of these methods, we designed an empirical study in which Agile and traditional methods were compared in an academic context. By applying a traditional method to the development of software products, we managed to obtain a more reproducible result, though we could not obtain evidence of an improvement in quality. On the contrary, by applying an Agile method, we obtained evidence of higher productivity, but with a significant dispersion, an aspect that would be interesting to analyze in future studies
    VL  - 3
    IS  - 1
    ER  - 

    Copy | Download

  • Sections