FRAMEWORK AS SOFTWARE SERVICE (FASS) - An Agile e-Toolkit to Support Agile Method Tailoring

Abstract

In a real software application development environment, a pre-defined or fixed methodology, whether planbased or agile, is unlikely to be successfully adopted "off-the-shelf". Agile methods have recognised that a method should be tailored to each situation. The purpose of this paper is to present an agile e-toolkit software service to facilitate the tailoring of agile processes in the overall context of agile method adoption and improvement. The agile e-toolkit is a web-based tool to store and manage agile practices extracted from various agile methods and frameworks. The core component of the e-toolkit is the agile knowledge-base or repository. The agile knowledge-base contains agile process fragments. Agile consultants or teams can then use agile process fragments stored in the agile knowledge-base for the tailoring of situation-specific agile processes by using a situational method engineering approach. The e-toolkit software service has been implemented using a service-oriented cloud computing technology platform (Software as a Service-SaaS). The agile e-toolkit specifications and software application details have been summarized in this paper.