Agile Software Process and its experience

This article proposes a new software process model, ASP (Agile Software Process) and discusses its experience in a large-scale software development. The Japanese software factory was a successful model in the development of quality software for large-scale business applications in the 80s. However, the requirements to software development have been dramatically changed for last several years. Development cycle-time has been promoted to one of the top goals of software development in the 90s. Unlike conventional software process models based on volume, the ASP is a time-based process model which aims at quick delivery of software products by integrating the light-weight processes, modular process structures and incremental and iterative process enaction. The major contributions of APS include; 1) A new process model and its enaction mechanism based on time, 2) A software process model for evolutional delivery, 3) A software process architecture integrating concurrent and asynchronous processes, incremental and iterative process enaction, distributed multi-site processes, and the people-centered processes, 4) A process-centered software engineering environment for ASP, and 5) Experience and lessons learned from the use of ASP in the development of a family of large-scale communication software systems for more than five years.