Agile approach slashes software development time

Results of the EUREKA ITEA software Cluster AGILE project make it possible for European manufacturers to develop high quality embedded software in markedly shorter times and at much lower costs than possible with traditional techniques. Applying the approach to 68 pilot case studies in industries from avionics and telecommunications to consumer electronics, the project demonstrated clearly that 'agile' methodology can lead to massive improvements in embedded software engineering. Suitable tooling was also demonstrated to simplify application of the agile approach. As a result, much more software development can be carried out cost effectively in Europe rather than being outsourced to Asia.

Use of embedded software in electronics devices is growing even faster than advances in electronics themselves. Yet human capabilities for producing software have not increased in Europe over the past decade. "The amount of software is growing very rapidly and it is increasingly difficult to find the people and resources necessary to develop it all," explains Dr Pekka Abrahamsson of project coordinator VTT Technical Research Centre in Finland. "As a result, Europe is seeing a lot of development work transferring to India and other countries. An additional problem lies in the speed of development as it is necessary to get solutions to market in optimum time and with sufficient reliability that it works properly."

AGILE therefore focused on processes and technologies needed to develop software systems faster and more reliably and to meet changing market needs. "Agile is a new paradigm for software development that emerged around eight years ago in the USA," says Dr Abrahamsson. "When we started the ITEA project in 2004, we did not know whether this new methodology could be exploited for embedded software in avionics, telecommunications, automotive and consumer electronics."

One of the principals underlying this new paradigm is that it welcomes change even late in the project. Change had always been seen as a very problematic but with the agile approach it is possible to add new features even a few days before entering the market with a product.

In addition, software-based features are often poorly used with only some 5% of features offered by a system effectively used by the consumers. "We turned this around to identify those critical features that would be used and put the emphasis on getting them to market first," adds Dr Abrahamsson. "So we are not always talking about technical issues when developing software but focusing on business-level issues and this was part of the methodology of our development."