Divide after you conquer: An agile software development practice for large projects

Abstract

Large software development projects are not agile by nature. Large projects are not easy to implement, they are even harder to implement using agile methodologies. Based on over 6 years of experience building software systems using agile methodologies we found that we can modify agile methodologies to be successfully applied to large projects. In this paper, we will introduce a development practice, which we call Divide After You Conquer to reduce some of the challenges during the development of large agile projects. By solving the base problem first with a smaller development team (Conquer phase) before expanding the team to its full size (Divide phase) we can solve many of the problems that occur with larger projects using agile methodologies. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.