Tool support for agile development

By Mascha Kurpicz, student in computer science, University of Bern

Project duration: Sept. 2010 – Feb. 2011

Scrum and other agile methodologies are now widely accepted in practice. In Scrum, the work is organized in user stories and the customer is responsible for their organization in a product backlog. During the iteration, daily meetings take place to set direction and focus. The overall emphasis is on the incremental delivery of working functionality and the reduction of work-in-progress.

Many tools exist to support software development (defect trackers, project planning, requirement gathering, reporting, etc.). In this project, we would like to investigate whether existing tools are adequate or not to do Scrum, and how they overlap or complement each other. If deficiencies are identified, we might propose and prototype a new tool to address them.

For instance, bug tracking is an established practice in software development. The interplay between traditional bug tracking and Scrum planning would be interesting to study. What are the various strategies used in practice? Are bugs systematically entered as new features into the Product Backlog? How are bugs reported in a Scrum project and what tools are used? Are other mechanisms used which “bend” the Scrum methodology in certain ways?

To conduct this research, we need access to Scrum projects’ data and tools. Short interviews with development managers and other staff might also be interesting to conduct to understand the tool choices and gather feedback on their usage. This research will lead to a better understanding of Scrum in general, but could also reveal valuable information specific to your company and its development practices.