Software Engineering for Embedded Systems: Chapter 21. Agile Development for Embedded Systems

Agile software development is a set of software development techniques based on iterative development. Requirements and software systems evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams. Agile development supports adaptive planning, evolutionary development and delivery, and a time-boxed iterative approach. The goal of agile is rapid and flexible response to change. Agile is a conceptual framework which promotes interactions throughout the development cycle. Applying agile to embedded software projects introduces some unique challenges, such as more difficulty effectively testing evolving software features, because the corresponding hardware may not be available in time, less freedom to make changes, due to the fact that the corresponding hardware change may have an unacceptably high cost, and less ability for “learn as you go” approaches, considering the hardware construction may demand a more upfront style of planning and design. This chapter will introduce agile software development and show how to apply these techniques to an embedded system.