Agile Component

Objectives

1.      The minimum short term objective is to provide Agile Process content which can be used by organizations and individuals who have a need for a documented process or at least the starting point for one. This will enable organizations to adopt Agile practices while at the same time meeting their process definition obligations for SOX, Six Sigma, CMM etc.

2.      A second more ambitious long term objective is to communicate the essence of Agile to all stakeholders in the software development life cycle.

Business Objectives

The Agile component shall seek maintain the visibility of the people center values of Agile development and their critical importance in the software development process. It is our hope that we can over time obtain the support of the Agile community through the endorsement of the Agile Alliance who currently view many process efforts with great suspicion. Informal discussions with the Agile community indicated that the community was neutral to EPF at this time and would take a watch and see what comes out attitude at this time.

Technical Objectives

1. Open Content Format.  Open content requires an open format.  The current view is that a compact XML Schema be used to document the format.  The actual schema would be owned and evolved by the EPF Composer tool component in response to user requirements. The open content format will facilitate the rapid import/export of existing content as well as the rendering of content in a form suitable for different audiences.

2.  Promote Neutral Vocabulary and Concepts. Each process uses a vocabulary and concepts which have a particular importance and familiarity to one or more audiences.  Our goal is to allow concepts such as Use Case and User Story to stand on their own without prejudicing one or the other with respect to their position in a concept hierarchy.

3.  Initial Content Contributions – Object Mentor/Bedarra will contribute the Agile/XP developer practices content and Ambysoft will contribute Agile Modeling content.  The initial contributions will be available in EPF Composer. IvarJacobson will contribute/collaborate with their EssUP process.