Integrating Acceptance-Test-Driven Development with Low Fidelity Prototyping for Web Applications Final Report
The funding from the Agile Alliance supported two lines of our research, executable acceptance test driven development (EATDD) on the one hand and the integration of agile methods and interaction design on the other. With the funding from the Agile Alliance, we investigated on how practitioners integrate interaction design and agile methods. We conducted a web survey as well in-depth interviews. Our research confirms earlier reports on different integration modes and broadens the empirical understanding of the area. It also resulted in a low-fi prototyping tool that is specifically useful to integrate lightweight usability testing into short iterations. The tool was developed based on the results of the empirical studies that highlighted problems resulting from agile iterations on usability evaluations. We are also working on extending our existing empirical studies on EATDD and on tool support for EATDD (including refactoring, integration with project planning) as well as on some innovative ideas and extensions of EATDD (multi-modal acceptance testing, using acceptance testing for agile product lines). The Agile Alliance funding helped to partially support several graduate students working on their PhD and MSc thesis. It also lead to funding from industrial partners in the areas that were jump started by it. Publications related to the funded project are listed below (full papers and thesis can be downloaded from http://ase.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/index.php/Publications/Home):
Patrick Wilson: Active Story: A Low Fidelity Prototyping and Distributed Usability Testing Tool for Agile Teams, MSc Thesis, University of Calgary, August 2008. Yaser Ghanam and Frank Maurer: An Iterative Model for Agile Product Line Engineering. The SPLC Doctoral Symposium, 2008 - in conjunction with the 12th International Software Product Line Conference (SPLC 2008), Limerick, Ireland. Yaser Ghanam, Shelly Park and Frank Maurer: A Test-Driven Approach to Establishing & Managing Agile Product Lines. The 5th Software Product Lines Testing Workshop (SPLiT 2008) in conjunction with SPLC 2008, Limerick, Ireland. David Fox, Jonathan Sillito, Frank Maurer: Agile Methods and User-Centered Design: How These Two Methodologies Are Being Successfully Integrated In Industry. Agile Conference 2008, Toronto. Shelly Park, Frank Maurer: The Application of Multi-modal Test Execution Using Fitclipse. Agile Conference 2008 (Research-in-Progress Workshop), Toronto. Shelly Park, Frank Maurer: The Requirements Abstraction in User Stories and Executable Acceptance Tests. Agile Conference 2008 (Research-in-Progress Workshop), Toronto. Heiko Ordelt: Refactoring of Acceptance Tests, Master Thesis FH Mannheim, March 2008 (research conducted at the EBE Group).
Heiko Ordelt, Frank Maurer: Acceptance Test Refactoring, Proceedings 9th International Conference on Agile Processes and eXtreme Programming in Software Engineering (XP2008), Limerick, Ireland, Springer, 10-14 June 2008. Shelly Park, Frank Maurer: Multi-modal Functional Test Execution, Proceedings 9th International Conference on Agile Processes and eXtreme Programming in Software Engineering (XP2008), Limerick, Ireland, Springer, 10-14 June 2008. Shelly Park, Frank Maurer: The Benefits and Challenges of Executable Acceptance Testing, First Workshop on Scrutinizing Agile Practices, or "Shoot out at Process Corral" (APSO 2008), in conjunction with 30th International Conference on Software Engineering, Leipzig, Germany, 2008. Chengyao Deng: FitClipse: a Testing Tool for Supporting Executable Acceptance Test Driven Development, M.Sc. Thesis, University of Calgary, Department of Computer Science, Aug 2007. Chengyao Deng, Patrick Wilson and Frank Maurer: FitClipse, A Fit-based Eclipse Plug-in For Executable Acceptance Test Driven Development, Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Agile Processes in Software Engineering and eXtreme Programming (XP 2007), Como, Italy 2007 (Springer). Grigori Melnik, Frank Maurer: Multiple Perspectives on Executable Acceptance Test-Driven Development, Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Agile Processes in Software Engineering and eXtreme Programming (XP 2007), Como, Italy 2007 (Springer) (5 pages).
Overall, the funding was very helpful and impacted 4 MSc thesis (the last one to be finished by Dec 08). It also led to some new ideas that are now investigated by two new PhD students. Clearly, the Agile Alliance funding was only partial and students also received funding from other sources. But without the funding from the Agile Alliance we would probably not be able to move into new directions as quickly as we did and some of the new research projects would not exist. Thus, I am very grateful for the support and hope that the Alliance continues the program so that others can also benefit as much from it as our group. Frank Maurer University of Calgary 2500 University Dr NW Calgary, Alberta T2N 1N4 Canada maurer@cpsc.ucalgary.ca