Towards a Conceptual Framework and Tool Support for Linking Long-term Product and Business Planning with Agile Software Development

摘要

For a software company it is essential to understand how to link business management and software development decision-making. Agile methods adhere to the viewpoint of individual development projects, leaving business concerns such as long-term product and release planning and multi-project management mostly unaddressed. With poorly governed fast-paced development, the big picture of the ongoing work and its link to the company's overall business goals and strategy may become unclear. The difficulties in linking business and development are also reflected in current project management/issue tracking tool support. In this paper we present a conceptual framework of the links between long-term business, product and release planning and agile software development. The framework aims to provide a common language through which the big picture of software development-including needed roles, responsibilities and decision structures-can be analyzed, communicated and discussed. We also present Agilefant, a proof-of-concept tool based on the framework.