Quality Practices in Agile Approaches

Agile Approaches

Agile is an umbrella consisting of different methods adopted by the practitioners depending upon the circumstances. In the recent years Agile has been gaining popularity among software practitioners due to its ability in assisting the development team to deliver the software product in a short amount of time. 

Original Agile Approaches

Based on the circumstances under which the agile methodologies have been used can be classified into the following 3 categories:

Classification of Agile Approaches

1. 
   Agile Methodologies consist of the original agile methods
2. Hybrid Agile Methodologies consist of a combination of several original agile methodologies e.g. Industrial Extreme Programming merged with practices of Rational Unified Process
3. Miscellaneous category consists of methodologies adopting only certain aspects of the original agile methodologies

Extreme Programming, Test Driven/Test First Development, and SCRUM are among the most popular agile methodologies in an industry. Over the years various changes such as improved communication amongst the team members and customers, increased productivity via introduction of incentives, and improvement in team work have been introduced into the original agile methodologies in order to achieve the goals decided at the start of the software product's development.

Quality Assurance Practices

Quality assurance is about ensuring quality of the developed product. Some of the quality practices adopted during the development of a software product consist of:

Quality Assurance Practices

•Code refactoring can be obtained e.g. by simplifying method calls, adopting coding defined coding styles and decomposing large functions into smaller ones.

•System metaphors are used for developing an understanding of the system to be developed among the team members and the client.

•Among these practices, most of them are already defined by the agile manifesto.

•Some of these practices are limited to a certain agile method e.g. Code Refactoring and System Metaphors are limited to Extreme Programming method.

Quality Assurance Practices used in Agile Approaches

Following table lists the quality assurance practices used against a particular

agile approach: 

Quality Assurance Practices in Agile

Among all the above mentioned quality assurance practices, refactoring, iterative development, visual models, continuous testing, and customer collaboration have been found to be the most common quality practice adopted in various agile methodologies. Incorporation of such practices in agile methodologies has led to improved team work, communication and productivity in work environment, and at the same time has reduced code coupling, fault reduction, and code cohesion within the resultant software product.

References

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