A case study of SME web application development effectiveness via agile methods
Peter Clutterbuck, Owen Seamons, Terry Rowlands · 2009
Abstract: The development of Web applications is an important focus of the modern information enabled organization – whether the Web application development is in-house, outsourced, or purchased as ‘commercial-off-the-shelf ’ (COTS) software. Traditionally Web application development has been delivered via the dominant waterfall system. The waterfall system relies upon well-defined governance structures, linear phases, gating, and extensive reporting and sign-off documentation. An increasing number of development stakeholders criticise the waterfall system for web application development. The criticisms include a disproportionate focus on governance and process at the direct expense of flexibility and, most importantly, reduced productivity. One consequence of these criticisms is the increasing adoption of Web application development via agile-system methods. This agile-system approach centres upon smaller design teams, fewer development phases, and shorter development time tables. This case study examines the implementation of the agile-system approach as used by a Small-to-Medium Enterprise (SME) software developer. The case study data collection involves interviews and observations across three different SME sources: project managers, Web application programmers, and customers. The case study analysis synthesises the experiences of these managers, programmers and customers to produce an overall assessment of the usefulness of Web application delivery via agile-system methods. The major conclusions from the case study are that a ‘default ’ agilesystem approach may be tailored or fine-tuned to fit an individual developer’s software process. This tailoring is based