While traditional software development methodologies prove to be inadequate to the ever-changing requirements of the real world, Xpand IT embraced a new approach to the software development process: Agile.

Agile methodologies focus on what the client values the most: delivery.

It’s longer about contract and scope, it’s about value!

Xpand IT has successfully implemented agile methodologies delivering solutions to our clients and helped our clients implementing Agile frameworks and tools to support their activities.

After years of successful agile development and delivery, Xpand IT is particularly well positioned to introduce a complete and integrated set of tools and frameworks to the market to support Agile.

Why go Agile?

While traditional project management methodologies focus on scope definition and requirements specification, leading to inevitable contract discussions and eventually contract extensions, the Agile philosophy understands that reality is different. No scope or requirements definition can last updated very long and that’s something IT suppliers need to adapt to.

In that in mind, Xpand IT has strategically converted its development center into an agile software factory, implementing proven Agile methodologies, maximizing two dimensions of the development software process:

• development costs - Xpand IT offers one of the most competitive services on the market
• value delivered to the client - while traditional methodologies focus on scope and contract discussions, at Xpand IT we focus our efforts on continuously aligning the delivered solution with the ever-changing customer's expectations.

The result is a project delivered in less time and closer to what the customer really needs.

XPAgile

Our Agile methodology consists on a set of principles and guiding rules that leverage the benefits of traditional project management methodologies with the advantage of using an agile philosophy.

After performing a fast requirement analysis where a high-level view of the project is planned and documented, this view is comprised of:

• the overall architecture definition;
• the operational requirements;
• and a project road map.

The project is then developed in iterations that take usually two weeks to be completed (sprint). On each iteration, analysis, development, testing and documentation are completed for a set of functionalities defined by the customer. When each sprint is released, a set of functionalities is ready to go live.

This way, customers can validate continuously what is being produced instead of waiting extended periods of time to see results. Most of the times, these results are already out-of-dated. Agile mitigates that risk delivering and validating continuously.

Xpand IT invests in what the customer really needs and customers see project results showing up. A clear “win-win” situation!

Agile Tools Suite

Our suite of tools and practices are:

• Agile Project Management using Atlassian’s JIRA and Greenhopper for managing our backlog, planning sprints, viewing burndown charts and tracking our team through the entire release process;
• Continuous Integration (CI) Platform using Atlassian’s Bamboo, Apache Ant and Maven. CI brings faster feedback to our development process, preventing bugs from piling up and reducing the risk of project delays.
• Automated Unit Testing using jUnit, nUnit and Selenium, which allow us to detect many bugs before the software is delivered for customer acceptance.
• Code Reviews using Atlassian’s Crucible, which turns peer reviews a very easy process to handle; Peer reviews increase the quality of the code and thus the quality of the final software package.

• Code Repositories managed by SVN and monitored through Atlassian’s Fisheye, allowing inspecting on a daily basis which code was committed and who has changed what.
• Project Documentation and Knowledge Base stored in Atlassian’s Confluence, the best Enterprise Wiki in the market. We typically have one space per project, and a well-defined structure of the documentation that is required for every project. Clients are given access to this space and it becomes the main mean of collaboration throughout the project.
• Project oriented ERP, which allow us to have near real-time cost control the see on how are our projects financially progressing.

Portuguese Government and European Union Support XPAgile

During the year 2008 and 2009, Xpand IT invested a significant amount of effort submitting an ambitious plan to build a fully-agile software development factory to the QREN authority (www.qren.pt). It consisted on implementing an end-to-end solution from the lowest-level development practices to the top management finance reporting.

This project proved Xpand IT fully embraced agile methodologies and stays committed to it.
In mid-2009, Xpand IT’s plan was approved and since then our company is moving deeper into agile-ground. We are continuously expanding our offer in this area and complementing our services with our own findings during our agile implementation execution.

XPAgile and CMMI

Although Agile and CMMI seem to be opposite, Xpand IT is committed to prove they’re not. In a unique move, Xpand IT has step forward and engaged on a Level 2 CMMI certification program that will be finished by the end of 2010.

Methodology refinements had to be discussed and detailed throughout several workshops with experts in CMMI and Agile.
The result was a “best of both worlds” consistent methodology that unifies the control and reporting capabilities of CMMI with the flexibility and efficiency of Agile.

Atlassian

Atlassian is an Australian company with offices in Sydney, San Francisco and Amsterdam. Their focus is to build software to support the Agile Development Process and they are a reference on how Agile should be performed (www.atlassian.com/agile/). Today Atlassian has over 220 employees worldwide, along with a strong product lineup of 7 collaboration and development software tools. Over 17,000 organisations in more than 141 countries are now customers of Atlassian.

Xpand IT is an Atlassian offical partner since 2004, covering the Portuguese and Spanish markets for Consulting, Installation, Maintenance and Training of Atlassian Software. This close partnership enabled Xpand IT to access to Atlassian’s tools and Agile know-how and apply them in our own projects.

For more information, please download our XPAGILE Datasheet.