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Applying agile methods to aircraft embedded software: an experimental analysis
Author(s) -
Mirachi Samoel,
Costa Guerra Valdir,
Cunha Adilson Marques,
Dias Luiz Alberto Vieira,
Villani Emilia
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
software: practice and experience
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.437
H-Index - 70
eISSN - 1097-024X
pISSN - 0038-0644
DOI - 10.1002/spe.2477
Subject(s) - agile software development , scrum , agile unified process , lean software development , software , agile usability engineering , quality (philosophy) , systems engineering , computer science , engineering , software engineering , software development , software development process , operating system , philosophy , epistemology
SUMMARY This paper discusses the applicability of agile methods to aircraft embedded software development. It presents the main results of an experiment that combines agile practices from Scrum with model‐based development and distributed development. The experiment consists of the development of an aircraft cockpit display system divided in five distributed teams. Three features are analysed and quantified, using the output artefacts of each team: the artefacts' quality, the adherence to agile methods, and the adherence to standard DO‐178C. The main conclusion of the experiment is that there is a high correlation between the adherence to agile methods and the artefacts' quality, motivating the use of agile methods in aircraft industry. Also, the experiment evinced that agile methods does not specifically address the integration of distributed teams and the hardware/software integration. This lacuna affects the artefacts' quality. The results of the experiment emphasize the importance of concentrating future work in the proposal of specific agile practices for these activities. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.