1. Mapping Agile Methods to ERP: Directions
and Limitations
Rogerio Atem de Carvalho
Federal Fluminense Institute, Brazil
Björn Johansson
Copenhagen Business School, Denmark
Rodrigo Soares Manhaes
Federal Fluminense Institute, Brazil
2. Motivation
Historically ERP systems have been developed
in waterfall (or almost like) approach
Although based on heavily planned and
documented processes, still occurs a lot of
“misfit”:
Long delay between requirements elicitation and
implementation (customization)
Too many levels of documents between
requirements and code
Lack of a proper communication process
3. Motivation
Development (customization) is a learning
process: developers learn about the users’
business needs
Big Design Up Front may facilitate planning
however creates a long gap between
requirements elicitation and the actual
implementation of them
Given the figures on ERP implementation
failure, why not use Agile?????
4. Agile Principles
Iteractive & Incremental
Ubiquitous Language
Test Driven Development
Continuous Integration
Emergent Design
5. Iteractive & Incremental
Software is released frequently and in small
pieces
Provides constant communication between
developers and users
Limited by the “Late Integration Problem”:
processes integration points are discovered late in
the development
Can be solved by flexible, low cost process
integration techniques
6. Ubiquitous Language
Very important for communication, feedback
and close collaboration between a customers
and developers
Common language, covering the entire
communication chain from customer and
business analysis to the team’s internal
conversations and coding
Does not necessarily uses the exact customer
jargon, but an unambiguous and contradiction-
free version of the domain knowledge
Is not built in a single step, but it is iteratively
refined and improved
7. Test Driven Development
Writing test cases for every programming task:
feature creation or adaptation, improvements,
bug corrections etc
Design of the system can be continuously
improved without falling into the famous
Boehm's cost of change curve
The presence of testing data is not enough,
since ERP is both integrated software and an
adaptable framework, regression testing is a
must: it occurs when a given module is altered
to meet a given customer’s specific needs
8. Continuous Integration
“Integration hell”: incompatibility between
modules, broken dependencies, out of date
modules, lack of compliance to coding
standards etc
Continuous integration (CI) provides both agility
and fast feedback, consisting of making at least
daily project builds
Every commit triggers a complete build with
immediate feedback of errors
Guarantees that software is always working
properly
9. Emergent Design
In an iterative and incremental, agile-style lifecycle,
design is not performed up-front, but incrementally
evolved as it meets the current iteration requirements
Emergent design (ED): process of evolving systems in
response to changing requirements, better
understanding of existing requirements, and in
response to new opportunities that arise from new
technology, better ideas, and a changing world
To be able to follow this principle, some disciplines
must be applied: TDD, refactoring, expressive code
and heavy use of design patterns
10. Limitations
Cultural limitations:
Predictive Planning mindset
Contracts: Product (an ERP) X Service (an ERP
customization)
(Excessive) HR especialization (analyst, designer,
programmer...)
Communication based on many abstraction levels, with
different artifacts
Technical limitations:
Legacy technologies
Database centric techniques
Determination of a sound Ubiquitous Language
11. Conclusions
The statistics on unsuccessful ERP
implementations urge for new ways of facing
the misalignment problem
Agile techniques can improve communication
There exist cultural and contractual barriers
Future directions:
Agile techniques adoption levels for Proprietary,
Free, and In-house
Behavior Driven Development for ERP
