1st International Workshop on the Engineering of Mobile-Enabled Systems MOBS 2013 In conjunction with the 35th International Conference on Software Engineering ICSE 2013 Software Development Processes for Mobile Systems Is Agile Really Taking Over the Business? Luis Corral, Alberto Sillitti, Giancarlo Succi Center for Applied Software Engineering Faculty of Computer Science Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy May 25, 2013
Developing Mobile Software Traditional development and quality frameworks offer comprehensive criteria for conducting generalpurpose software projects. ISO 25010, SPICE, CMMi, ISO 12204,... None of them has been developed considering the context of Mobile users Mobile execution environments Mobile application markets?
Main Approaches What are the processes that respond efficiently to the challenges of the mobile environment......and facilitate the development of high quality products of this domain? Agile Methods, NPD Engineering, Spiral and Planbased methodologies have been proposed. The majority of the methodologies show a convergent approach based on the Agile home ground themes. What are the Agile-based methodologies that have been proposed for mobile software development?
Agile Mobile Development Mobile-D (Abrahamsson et al., 2004) MASAM (Jeong, Lee and Shin, 2008) Hybrid (Rahimin and Ramsin, 2008) Scrum (Scharff and Verna, 2010) SLeSS (Cunha et al, 2011)
Introducing Our Discussion The reviewed Agile-based frameworks deem to suit the needs of the mobile environment. Let's discuss: i) The suitability of Agile methods to fit the mobile needs. ii) The contribution of Agile methods to implement mobile products. iii) The real use of the proposed methodologies. iv) The rise of new conditions that challenge some of the premises upon which the proposed methodologies were designed.
Are Agile Methods the Best Fit? Mobile apps should be developed quickly and keeping a low price in a competitive market of millions of potential users and products. Agile practices allow adapting processes and practices to the unsteady needs of the mobile domain. Agile methods provide flexibility to understand the market, structure the product and release it short time frames.
Is Agile Impacting the Final Product? At the level of abstraction presented in the papers and experience reports, is hard to make this claim. Agile practices may suit the business needs of the mobile environment, but fall short on providing an implementation framework for the mobile product. Great focus on the what, Less focus on the how
What is the Evidence of Use? Unfortunately, it is poor. Methodology Year Case Studies Cited By Mobile-D 2004 16 17 MASAM 2008 0 3 Hybrid 2008 0 9 Scrum 2010 1 4 SLeSS 2011 1 1 Field studies attempt to identify evidence on the OSs, SDKs, type of applications, but not in the methodologies. They suggest a clear trend on shortening the development cycle and broaden the impact of a single iteration (related to some Agile principles)
Agile and the Evolution of the Domain In 2004 the mobile business and development environment were different to the current one. A decade of evolution on the mobile domain (software, hardware and business models) has brought significant advancements. Ten years ago, concepts like App Markets, Location- Based Services, Geolocation, Mobile Software Development Kits were emerging terms or simply did not exist.
Summary Still missing a clear link between the proposed methodologies and their utilization in a production setting. Development surveys pay little attention on mobile software development frameworks. Open Question: The Agile paradigm was really adopted, dismissed, or the business created a new one? The evolution of the mobile environment challenges the original association between the Agile and mobile software.
Take Away Mobile requires Agility. Large, obese projects will not success in such a dynamic world (devices, markets, users, etc.) Mobile can live without Agility. No silver bullet can be claimed, any disciplined development process can be helpful. Later approaches prove that Agile falls short on solving the complex needs of this heterogeneous world.
1st International Workshop on the Engineering of Mobile-Enabled Systems MOBS 2013 In conjunction with the 35th International Conference on Software Engineering ICSE 2013 Questions? Luis.Corral@stud-inf.unibz.it www.inf.unibz.it/~lcorralvelazquez/mobile/ @Luis_Corral Luis Corral, Alberto Sillitti, Giancarlo Succi Center for Applied Software Engineering Faculty of Computer Science Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy May 25, 2013