iAgile: Mission Critical Military Software Development

Abstract

This paper reports the experience of applying agile methods in the defense sector, characterized mostly by embedded and mission critical software. We describe the experience of creating a Command and Control system for the 4th Logistic Department of the Italian Army's General Staff. The project was approved by the Army as a pilot to determine whether it could be possible to reduce development costs and at the same time produce a product better responsive to the changing conditions in the theatre of operations, where often the confrontation has become asymmetric and requires reaction times much faster than the conventional approach. After 13 five-week long sprints, we were able to deliver a complete product that met all user requirements and satisfied regulatory Army requirements. Achieving this result required a concerted effort to change the development culture, but even when counting this effort as part of the development costs, the total development costs were lower than the costs of using the traditional development method. This paper summarizes the experience trying, whenever possible, to quantify the results, and to support the observed positive results with appropriate data.