J. Collins, D. Harper, M. McNulty, J. Lacy, L. Lopez, S. Lewis, M. Liu, S. Reed, I. Truslove, H. Wilcox
The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) switched to using the Agile/Scrum methodology in early 2011. NSIDC’s projects range from new web-based applications to scientific data products. Our development teams have adopted practices such as continuous integration (CI), test-driven development (TDD), acceptance testing, and pair programming. Surprisingly, growing organically from this Agile soil emerged a close-knit team. In this presentation we will outline our technical practices, report on the experience of moving to Scrum in a mixed scientific and informatics environment, and focus on the human side of our Agile development experience. Recurring themes during difficult yet honest retrospectives, focusing the whole team to work on a single feature, and our “quality angst” are amongst the challenges which we have met and which have ultimately made us into a more successful, productive team.
All of the authors/speakers are software engineers currently working for the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) whose main goal is to support research into our world’s frozen realms: the snow, ice, glaciers, frozen ground, and climate interactions that make up Earth’s cryosphere. Our software engineering team supports this goal by creating custom software to fulfill the center’s need for managing and distributing data, creating tools for data access, supporting data users, performing scientific research, and educating the public about the cryosphere. The individuals on our software team come from very varied backgrounds within the software industry, and have vastly different experience levels ranging from graduate student to 15+ years in the software industry.
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 NSIDC_The_Human_Side_of_Agile.pdf | 1022.29 KB |
