Source code repositories and Agile Methods

Abstract

Source repositories are a promising database of information about software projects. This paper proposes a tool to extract and summarize information from CVS logs in order to identify whether there are differences in the development approach of Agile and non-Agile teams. The tool aims to improve empirical investigation of the Agile Methods (AMs) without affecting the way developers write code. There are many claims about the benefits of AMs; however, these claims are seldom supported by empirical analysis. Configuration management systems contain a huge amount of quantitative data about a project. The retrieval and part of the analysis can be automated in order to get useful insights about the status and the evolution of the project. However, this task poses formidable challenges because the data source is not designed as a measurement tool. This paper proposes a tool for extracting and summarizing information from CVS (Concurrent Versions System) repositories and a set of analysis that can be useful to identify common or different behaviors. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.