Agile development: opportunity or fad?

Abstract

The importance of integrating software engineering and HCI methods has been recognised for many years. Agile development is a new approach to software engineering that explicitly champions an active role for the customer. Indeed, eXtreme Programming (XP), one of the most popular agile development methods, strives to include a real user(s) in the team who is located 'on-site' with software developers.In this panel we will debate whether or not agile software development provides an opportunity to integrate HCI and software engineering concerns. The panel members represent a wide cross-section of experiences in this area and will consider how agile development can help improve the current situation, consider specific example scenarios provided by the audience, and, with the audience's help, will decide whether agile development is an opportunity not to be missed, or just another fad that will pull the two communities further apart.