Hybrid Agile Software Development for Smart Farming Application

Abstract

Agile methodology for software development has nowadays become the most used ones by Industry and start-ups. Notwithstanding the still persistent general perception of “agile” being free and unregulated, most of the agile methods are very demanding on rituals and on building an effective and working relationship with their Customers/Stakeholders. Some projects, as the one presented in this paper, are characterized by a huge area of uncertainty where neither the customers nor the developers have a consistent knowledge of the domain. In such cases the agile rituals cannot be initiated properly until a knowledge acquisition phase is performed. In this paper the peculiar “research project” approach used to solve the domain knowledge gap is presented and the subsequent “hybrid agile” method is discussed. A peculiar mix of domain specific research, technology survey and rethinking the agile scrum frame has made it possible to deliver a successful application working in the Smart Farming domain.