The University of Deusto participates in the XPW project of the application of agile methodologies

El XPWorkflow project arose from the need to adapt developments to the on-going changes in customer requirements and having less and less time. These phenomena gave rise to a gradual implantation of development methodologies known as Agile or Light as opposed to Traditional or Heavy.

The clearest example may be seen in the case of the development of web-orientated applications. The development cycles of which occur in short time periods, often in not more than a matter of a week or a fortnight. Moreover, they are subject to frequent changes in the requirements and needs of the clients in order to better compete with the services offered by the competition. In this field, being slow in launching a service onto the market means losing potential clients.
The most common Agile methodology is Extreme Programming, which has proved to be extremely efficient, especially in web-based project development, although it has also proved its worth in other ambits such as embedded software.
Given its recent growing expansion, investigating its validity has been deemed more important before actually developing tools for its management. There is no tool enabling a complete management of Extreme Programming projects currently on the market.
The most recent efforts in this area are still far from being considered tools for project management in the broad sense of the term.
The objective of this project is to develop a tool, novel and unique on the market, for the integrated management of projects, in line with the new trends in software development and specifically with the Extreme Programming methodology.
This development is focussed on two aims:,- the principal one is to provide practices with a for the areas such as management requirements and planning thereof.,- with the aim of taking advantage of the already existing tools for this application, for example those used to automate unitary tests. A solution will be developed based on interfaces that enable the incorporation of results obtained from existing tools as another set of data in the management of the project.
In this way a solution can be offered which really will be of benefit for the organisations involved, as they will be in a position to offer a tool which is an innovation in Extreme Programming project management.The consortium for this project is made up of SQS SA, offering quality assurance services in software; Siemens, one of the largest industrial groups with a clear commitment in the development of innovation, the Engineering Faculty at Deusto (Basque Country), with its long experience in training and research in technologies.

Countries

Spain