Conceptual Design of Targeted Scrum: Applying Mission Command to Agile Software Development

Abstract

Software engineering and mission command are two separate but similar fields. Both are instances of complex problem solving in environments with ever changing requirements. Also, they have followed similar paths from using industrial age decomposition to deal with large problems to striving to be more agile and resilient. In fact, an entire subset of current software engineering techniques is known as agile methods. Our hypothesis is that modifications to an agile software development methodology (Scrum) based on inspirations from mission command can improve the software engineering process in terms of the planning, prioritizing, and communication of software requirements and progress, as well as improve the overall product. Targeted Scrum is a modification of Scrum based on three inspirations from Mission Command: End State, Line of Effort, and Targeting. Those inspirations led to the creation of the Product Design Meeting and modifications of some current Scrum meetings and artifacts. We propose to test this hypothesis during a semester long graduate level software engineering class. The students will develop software using both methodologies. We will then assess how well these two methodologies assist the software development teams in planning and developing the software architecture, prioritizing requirements, and communicating progress.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 01, 2014
Accession Number
ADA607050

Entities

People

  • Arvin Agah
  • David P. Harvie

Organizations

  • University of Kansas

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • C4I
  • Engineered Resilient Systems
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Agile Software Development
  • Artifacts
  • Command And Control
  • Computer Programming
  • Computer Science
  • Computers
  • Databases
  • Department Of Defense
  • Engineering
  • Environment
  • Extreme Programming
  • Military Operations
  • Personnel Management
  • Software Design
  • Software Development
  • Students
  • Technical Debt

Fields of Study

  • Computer science
  • Engineering

Readers

  • Enterprise Information Systems Architecture and Joint Command Capability Interoperability Support.
  • Geospatial Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence Analytics
  • Systems Analysis and Design