Prof. Dr. Armin B. Cremers, Jan Nonnen, Daniel Speicher

Agile software development, teamwork and efficiency, as known from eXtreme Programming (XP), are the focus of this seminar and practical lab. Base techniques to achieve this goal are customer-orientated planning, short development iterations, pair programming, automated testing and refactoring. This lab affords the opportunity to gather practical knowledge of XP and other techniques of agile software development. Every participant is important for the success of the project, which will be developed by the small team within four weeks.

During this lab, a tool should be extended and further improved which assists developers in the Eclipse IDE. For that purpose, different program comprehension techniques, visualizations and game elements are going to be implemented and integrated into Eclipse.

Update 20.09.2013: What did we develop? Staying aware of the current contributions of other members in a team is difficult. Keeping the motivation of newcomers and experienced contributers alive - especially in open source development - is a challenge. We developed and extended plugins to the eclipse integrated development environment that support the team in staying aware of the other team members contributions. Individual achievements are recognized by the plugins. And last but not least, we will present a first approach to transform the tedious task of increasing the test coverage into an engaging challenge for the team.

Over the years we suggested different variations of Agile processes to the team of students taking part in the lab. The process was always considered set up to be adaptive based on feedback and retrospectives. Often the resulting productivity exceeded our expectations. In the last two years we managed to improve the development flow by adding limits to the work in progress. This year we want to encourage the team to explore the effect of a stop the line culture to create a high quality culture. Besides other means we plan to use our tool Cultivate for that.

Update 20.09.2013: How did we develop? The process evolved over the years including elements from Extreme Programming, Scrum and finally Kanban. As already a few times before we got new improvement suggestions from an external consultant. This year the students mastered eclipse development in Java and test creation in Groovy using the Spock framework.

For questions either contact us through email, or come to our offices A107-A109 in the Römerstrasse 164.

Informational meeting: 01.02.2013 - 16h00 c.t. (Room A121, Altbau, Römerstr. 164, Bonn) - for information purposes only

Assessment Center: 05.04.2013 - 9h30 (Lecture Room HS1, Altbau, Römerstr. 164, Bonn) - Participation required for every applicant

Preparation Seminar: 20.08.2013¹⁾ to 24.08.2013; 9h00-18h00 (Room 1.30-1.32 in b-it Building, Bonn)

Practical Lab: 26.08.2013 to 20.09.2013; 9h00-18h00 (Room 1.30-1.32 in b-it Building, Bonn)

In the preparation seminar the conceptual background of the developed product is discussed. In addition the methodologies, frameworks, and practices of agile software development are introduced, as well as concrete information about the technology required to master the lab topic. Participation in the preparation seminar is obligatory for lab participation!

The lab is open for IPEC-Students, computer science students from Uni Bonn (Hauptdiplom and CS Master), students of the B-IT, and students from RWTH Aachen.

This application process is over.

B-IT: Graded certificate of Seminar- and Lab-Participation (5 SWS)
Uni Bonn - CS Bachelor: Benotete Projektgruppe (auf Antrag)
Uni Bonn - CS Master: Graded Seminar- and Lab-Certificate. 4+9 ECTS Points
Other Universities: Certificate of Seminar- and Lab-Participation

This lab is part of the International Program of Excellence (IPEC) of the Bonn-Aachen International Center for Information Technology (b-it). The curriculum offered by IPEC addresses a limited number of highly gifted students, who are enrolled in the University of Bonn, the RWTH Aachen, or in other German or foreign universities. This results in a speed-up of studying and in a simultaneous increase of quality. Due to the limited number of participants and the high standard of the program, a pre-selection of participants is required.

• For Master students at Uni Bonn, the following courses are strongly recommended for participation:
  
  • Advanced Topics in Software Construction (MA-INF 3212)
  • User Centered Software Design (MA-INF 3217)

The lab will be conducted in English.

There are excellent resources about this on the web. Here is a selection of links, we recommend:

• Don Wells prepared a gentle introduction to eXtreme Programming.
  He prepared a gentle introduction into Agile as well. Highly recommended!
• Ron Jeffries answers the question “What is Extreme Programming?” and almost any other question about XP.
• If you are looking for a good overview in German, you should consult Frank Westphal's site.
• You might read the Agile Manifesto with its 12 Principles. (There was an anniversary 2011)
• Recently David Anderson described and recommended a process he called Kanban. We find the description from Henrik Kniberg especially accessible.
• Like a spice Kanban makes existing processes more tasty and digestible. The presentation "Kanban and Scrum - making the most of both" explains it for Scrum.
• Finally you might be interested in what we learned about Kanban from Matthias Bohlen.