An agile development process and its assessment using quantitative object-oriented metrics

Abstract

The development of a Web application using agile practices is presented, characterized by empirical software measurements that have been performed throughout the duration of the project. The project is the specialization of jAPS, an open source Java Web portal generation framework, for building a Research Register management system. The agile principles and practices used in the project are described and discussed. During the various phases of the project some key agile practices, such as pair programming, test-based development and refactoring, were used at different levels of adoption. The evolution of some object-oriented metrics of the system, and their behavior related to the agile practices adoption level is presented and discussed, showing that software quality, as measured using standard OO metrics, looks directly related to agile practices adoption. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2008.