Adapting SCRUM to the italian army: Methods and (open) tools

Abstract

Many software-related technologies, including software development methodologies, quality models, etc. have been developed due to the huge software needs of the Department of Defense (DoD) of the United States. Therefore, it is not surprising that the DoD is promoting open source software and agile approaches into the development processes of the defense contractors1. The quality of many open source product has been demonstrated to be comparable to the close source ones and in many cases even higher and the effectiveness of agile approaches has been demonstrated in many industrial settings. Moreover, the availability of the source code makes open source products attractive for obvious reasons (e.g., security, long term maintenance, etc.). Following this trend, also the Italian Army has started using open source software and promotes its usage into the development processes of its contractors, also promoting agile approaches in many contexts focusing on the SCRUM methodology. This paper provides an overview of the SCRUM development process adopted by the Italian Army for the development of software systems using open source technologies.