The role of physical artefacts in agile software development: Two complementary perspectives

Abstract

a b s t r a c tAgile software development promotes feedback, discipline and close collaboration between all members of the development team, and de-emphasises documentation, 'big design up front' and hierarchical processes. Agile teams tend to be co-located and multi-disciplinary, and rely heavily on face-to-face communication and seemingly simple physical artefacts to support interaction. In this paper we focus on the functionality of two key physical artefacts -the story card and the Wall -which, individually and in combination, underpin the team's activity. These artefacts have two main roles -one which enables a shared understanding of requirements and one which facilitates the development process itself. We consider these roles from two perspectives: a notational perspective and a social perspective. This discussion shows how the two perspectives -the notational and the social -intertwine and are mutually supportive. Any attempt to replace these physical artefacts with alternative support for an agile team needs to take account of both perspectives, and the complex relationships between them.

Creative idea exploration within the structure of a guiding framework

“…Most of these aspects are easily overlooked when thinking of a project as device-centered, mobile technology. Session 6 looked at field studies of agile programming teams [15], aiming to tease out the role of physicality, tangibility and embodiment for group coordination and awareness. A longer-term goal was to develop ideas on how to support distributed agile teams by emulating some of the aspects found crucial.…”

Learning Dimensions

“…In three iterations of short demonstration followed by enactment by learners, three tasks were tackled: making an LED blink, using a potentiometer to control the blink rate and using a button to make the LED blink when pressed. To introduce a creative disruption to the flow of Session 7C: Feedback ITiCSE '17, July 3-5, 2017, Bologna, Italy tuition, an idea-generation session was used to gather ideas posted together on a wall serving as an information radiator [24] for use later in the day. The learners were then guided through some additional Arduino output devices: servo, speaker and red green blue (RGB) LED.…”

Factors Influencing Software Development Process: A statistical Outlook

“…In one of the paper it shows how the two perspectives -the notational and the social -intertwine and are mutually supportive. Any attempt to replace these physical artifacts' with alternative support for an agile team needs to take account of both perspectives, and the complex relationships between them [6]. Melnik and Maurer conducted a research on using agile methods in software engineering education.…”