A case study in agility and evolving the long-lived software system

Abstract

Understanding how to effectively evolve long-lived software systems is of ongoing interest. Agile development methods are regarded as best practice by industry for software teams, and empiricists regard studying long-lived agile projects and Scrum teams as priorities. In this paper we explore, through empirical study, and with consideration to organisational context, a case study of a successful, long-lived software project team, implementing Scrum techniques. We apply both qualitative and quantitative analysis, incorporating a questionnaire of 24 professionals and project source code repository analysis. Survey respondents felt, in general, that agile led to desirable project outcomes and fostered effective communication. However, some specific cautions were identified. Diverse process, toolset and software were used to meet project needs. Evolutionary themes observed in the system source code repository included language type fragmentation and growing support for the web stack. Continued codebase growth was measured after a transition to Scrum. Three frontiers for future innovation were discovered: to explore development toolsets with integration as an agile enabler, automating agile and business process interfaces and, strategic evolution of language fragmented architectures, in the agile context.