Optimizing Agile Development in Maintenance

Optimizing Agile Development in Maintenance

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What are main claims of the paper?

The main claims of the paper are that there has been an increased and accepted trend in incorporation of agile methods in development of software as well as their maintenance. Maintenance looks into the modification of an already existing software in a bid to ensure that the faults within are corrected and there is improvement in its performance in order for it to fit in the environmental changes. Hence the paper argues that when these successful agile methods that have been progressively used in software development are used in maintenance of the same software then the performance and agility will be highly improved as well as mitigating unnecessary costs that maintainers have been facing while using traditional methods in maintenance of software (Heeager & Rose, 2014).

What is the reasoning for each main claim?

In commercial projects, maintenance represents majority of the product as codebase that were previously developed are used to make the product. There is thus a need to optimize the already existing software rather than spending more money in developing new ones instead of maintaining the ones that already exist. The maintenance department has thus embraced the agile methods in the maintenance of these projects since the agile methods have proven to be very effective and efficient in development of the same software (Heeager & Rose, 2014).

What evidence is provided?

After extensive research on the application of agile methods in maintenance at Aveva and information group at Aalborg University, it was thus found that agile methods are very effective as they have dynamically revolutionized maintenance in the software industry though their adoption face a number of challenges. Their incorporation in maintenance balance the portfolio for the customer needs in maintenance and at the same time creating some flexibility in maintenance as any urgent request of the customer can be dealt with promptly. Moreover, discrete tasks can be worried on by team members cohesively thus fostering team learning, customer relationship is not specific as in agile development but it gives an equal opportunity and concentration to all customers equally hence developing many relationships. When it comes to documentation, it is intensified for the sake of future reference and finally the meetings for planning and evaluation are short and effective (He eager & Rose, 2014).

What warrants, if any, are provided for this evidence?

The warrant or rather guarantee that agile methods are adaptable in maintenance of software is in the fact that it was proven through research and testing at the Aalborg University in the Information Systems Group and the Aveva maintenance department whereby they did test the application of this concept and it proved effective though challenging. Seminars, interviews, observations and coded analysis were all done so as to document a viable conclusion (Heager & Rose, 2014).

Do you agree or disagree, why?

I do agree that optimization of agile approaches in maintenance of software will save companies and individuals as well as developers unnecessary costs of remanufacturing software while they could just reverse engineer the existing ones through maintenance or just offer direct maintenance using agile methods which are very convenient and efficient.

What potential objections are anticipated?

Other Engineers and researchers view the incorporation of agile methods as pointless and time wasting as the challenges they face in adoption to actually solving the maintenance menace are quite bulky and they may tend to induce more costs that could have been used to just develop new software. For example, some engineers have adopted the pair programming to improve the code quality in maintenance but others view it as pointless even though it has been proven applicable (Heeager & Rose, 2014).

What limitations are recognized?

The goals that are usually assumed in developing of software usually lack in maintenance when agile methods are incorporated on the basis of iterative development. Secondly, since the number of maintenance requests are too many, then maintenance personnel are forced to work as individuals hence the notion that agile methods promote teamwork is not applicable in some circumstances in this case. Customer interaction with the maintainer is undermined since the number of customers tend to be too many and hence there I no room for customer involvement. When it comes to software development using agile means, face to face communication is boosted but in this case it is not necessary as there are diverse tasks that the maintainer has to complete in a short time-span and when it comes to documentation, it is made bulky in maintenance for future reference since there is need for future referencing due to the diverse nature of tasks at hand and their diversity. Agile methods in maintenance do not offer an effective chance for testing due to bulkiness of tasks as they are in series and not time-bound (Heeager & Rose, 2014).

Research Method

The research was done in two major ways namely literature study and action research project at Aveva. This was done through a number of diverse techniques such as interviews, observations, seminars and coded and analyzed interviews. All these were projected in to testing the viability of incorporating agile methods in maintenance of software through a case study at Aalborg University (Heeager & Rose, 2014).

What did you get from the paper?

The major interest here is that it is possible to incorporate agile methods in software maintenance as they have proven to be very effective in the development of the software and thus if well utilized they could develop a cost effective system of improving the efficiency of existing software rather than developing new ones. I have also come to learn about various ways in which they are effective in maintenance (Heeager & Rose, 2014).

What was best about it?

The fact that there is hope and ability to adopt the agile methods in the software maintenance is a great technological advancement.

What was worst about it?

The fact that some scientists and developers find it pointless to incorporate lean in maintenance and they challenge the research of the optimists even though it has been proven beyond reasonable doubts that agile approach has been very effective in maintenance (Heeager & Rose, 2014).

What would you have done to improve the research/paper?

The research was well carried out in an intensive way but the fact that only a single case study drew the conclusion that agile methods are viable in software maintenance is a shortcoming and hence I would have conducted the same research to a number of other case studies and then come up with an averaged unbiased researched conclusion that is well accepted. The findings may be well analyzed but there were still some people who had a different opinion on the same and thus the need to have a varying research (Heeager & Rose, 2014).

References

Heeager L., T. & Rose J. (2014). Optimizing development practices for the maintenance operation: nine heurestics.