How can agile and documentation-driven methods be meshed in practice?

Abstract

Agile methods are becoming increasingly popular in software development; even by organizations complying with quality standards. The literature reports on scattered examples of organizations that have succeeded in meshing agile and documentation-driven methods. However, due to a lack of empirical research, it is not well understood how to implement a meshed software development practice. To increase the understanding of how to do this, this paper presents two case studies of the development of safety-critical software. The first case study presents challenges of adopting quality assurance in an agile software practice. The second case study shows how agile practices are adopted in a documentation-driven practice compliant with the US Food and Drug Administration standard. Based on a framework that identifies nine practice areas in which the methods differ, the challenges of and possibilities in implementing a meshed software development practice is presented. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014.