Estimating, planning and managing Agile Web development projects under a value-based perspective

Abstract

Please cite this article as: C.J. Torrecilla-Salinas, J. Sedeño, M.J. Escalona, M. Mejías, Estimating, planning and managing Agile Web development projects under a value-based perspective, Information and Software Technology (2015), doi: http://dx.Abstract Context: The processes of estimating, planning and managing are crucial for software development projects, since the results must be related to several business strategies. The broad expansion of the Internet and the global and interconnected economy make Web development projects be often characterized by expressions like delivering as soon as possible, reducing time to market and adapting to undefined requirements. In this kind of environment, traditional methodologies based on predictive techniques sometimes do not offer very satisfactory results. The rise of Agile methodologies and practices has provided some useful tools that, combined with Web Engineering techniques, can help to establish a framework to estimate, manage and plan Web development projects.Objective: This paper presents a proposal for estimating, planning and managing Web projects, by combining some existing Agile techniques with Web Engineering principles, presenting them as an unified framework which uses the business value to guide the delivery of features. Method:The proposal is analyzed by means of a case study, including a real-life project, in order to obtain relevant conclusions. Results:The results achieved after using the framework in a development project are presented, including interesting results on project planning and estimation, as well as on team productivity throughout the project. Conclusion:It is concluded that the framework can be useful in order to better manage Web-based projects, through a continuous value-based estimation and management process.

Agile Values and Their Implementation in Practice

“…For one thing, these are iterative process models such as Rational Unified Process [15], for the other it is about Agile Methodologies such as Scrum [16], Extreme Programming [17] and Feature-Driven Development [18]. Even, some initiatives are bringing together classical methodologies or tendency with agile principles, like approach presented in [19] or in [20]. In particular, agile approaches bring a high level of flexibility, which has not been there previously, and are suitable for the development of complex products [21].…”

“…For the evaluation of the results, the participants were included who have already used an agile approach (N = 93). The key aspects of the participants -in the last two years -were wide-ranging and covered the following subject areas 4 : project management (39), software architecture (30), quality assurance (26), back-end development (25), front-end development (23), user experience design (19), infrastructure (7), technical sales (7) and operations (6). 2 www.limesurvey.org 3 www.oncampus.de 4 Participants had the opportunity to make multiple choices …”

O papel do gerenciamento híbrido de projetos no desenvolvimento de produtos e serviços de base tecnológica.

“…Planejamento de longo prazo focado em todo o ciclo de vida do projeto (BOEHM; TURNER, 2003TURNER, , 2005IMPA, 2006;OCG, 2009;PMI, 2013;DVIR, 2007b) Planejamento de longo prazo, focado em todo o ciclo de vida do projeto, e planejamento de curto prazo com foco nas iterações BINFIRE, 2016;HAYATA;RONG;SHAO;TORRECILLA-SALINAS et al, 2015).…”

“…Com entregas integrais ou faseadas e documentação sofisticada e formal (BOEHM; TURNER, 2003;HIGHSMITH, 2004;DVIR, 2007b). SOMMER et al, 2015;TORRECILLA-SALINAS et al, 2015).…”

“…Portanto, o gerenciamento híbrido de projetos nesses contextos revela um papel estratégico para promover a agilidade no desenvolvimento de novos negócios, além de auxiliar as empresas a lidar com a dicotomia entre a necessidade de certo grau de controle dos projetos e garantir que os projetos tenham agilidade o suficiente para responder em tempo hábil às demandas de mercado, sem entrar em conflito com a cultura organizacional. SOMMER et al, 2015;TORRECILLA-SALINAS et al, 2015).…”