Agile Development and Micro Focus Development Tools

The sections Introduction to Agile Methods and Agile Development Workflow introduce the idea of Agile software development and summarize how Agile development works as a process. This section looks at the Agile development process and shows how different products available from Micro Focus fit into and add value to that process.

The diagram below shows the process presented in the topic Agile Development Workflow but has been updated to indicate which Micro Focus products are appropriate at different parts of the process. Although this diagram refers to Micro Focus products, the process described does not require the use of Micro Focus products, so if you are already using a third-party product for one part of the process you can continue to work with that and use Micro Focus products to integrate with it.

where the numbered steps are as follows:

  1. Use Micro Focus Atlas to create a list of requirements from customer feedback.
  2. Use Micro Focus Atlas to create a list of requirements based on your internal needs. These can be for anything at all, including new features, bug fixes, infrastructure or systems work, and technical debt.
  3. Use Micro Focus Atlas to combine your customers' requirements and your internal requirements. Once you have combined the requirements in Atlas you can export them to Micro Focus Rhythm as a product backlog. The product backlog is a prioritized list of the work that your development team will undertake to add the different items from your customers' and internal requirements.
  4. Use Micro Focus Rhythm to create sprint backlogs, which you use to define and track the work on the product backlog that will be done by the development team in a series of sprints. Sprints are also often referred to as "iterations".

    The length of a sprint is typically between one and four weeks and is usually fixed for the duration of a project.

    During each sprint, developers take items from the sprint backlog, work on them, and complete them by the end of the sprint.

    At the end of each sprint, the items on that sprint's backlog must be completed; not just coded, but tested, documented, and integrated into a working product that could be deployed (if required).

  5. Use Visual COBOL to produce a deliverable product package, if required.

    When using Visual COBOL, developers can use the complete array of analysis, intelligence and reporting tools provided by COBOL Analyzer to quickly gain a full understanding of the applications they are working on. Integration between Rhythm and Visual COBOL means developers can easily work on code changes and keep Rhythm's status information up to date at the same time.

    At the end of a sprint you return to the Agile planning stage to create the next sprint backlog.

    At the end of the project you return to the requirements gathering stage to create the new product backlog.

The following list gives a very brief summary of each of the Micro Focus products that play a part in the Agile development process: