Exia Process
Encyclopedia
The Exia Process is an Agile project management methodology and accompanying tool that functions as an add-on to Microsoft Team Foundation Server
. The Exia Process manages user stories, test cases, bugs, tasks, issues and documentation. As well it provides schedule management by extending the Team Foundation Server iteration scheme.
Unlike the Agile methodology, which does not advocate a specific implementation, the Exia Process is prescriptive. The underlying philosophy is that many teams struggle to implement Agile because it lacks specific guidance about what to do and when, which can result in confusion and prolonged management debate. Exia argues that a tool that offers a comprehensive pathway, guiding the users through Agile adoption from basic concepts to advanced implementation, can save time and increase efficiency.
The philosophy behind the design of the Exia whiteboard is to stem the loss of information by providing an electronic version that performs as many of the above functions as possible.
work item as the fundamental storage unit of text and by providing a Word-like interface. Using the work item as the fundamental storage unit provides version control at the paragraph level rather than the traditional document level. It also allows tight integration of documentation with other work items, since each paragraph is a work item itself, and can be related to other work item using the core Team Foundation Server work item relational architecture.
The Word-like GUI is achieved through a custom UI developed in Windows Presentation Foundation. The user edits as though using a word document, but the underlying engine is in fact manipulating individual TFS work items in the background.
solutions, the Exia Process is more prescriptive, defining and providing a more explicit tool set that requires less configuration. For instance the JIRA
architecture, by contrast, encourages and enables extensive configuration of work item types and work flow. A drawback to the Exia approach is that certain desired operations may not be available, while a benefit is less confusion and configuration time.
principles and implements the MSF Agile Software Development template installed in Team Foundation Server. A key difference is that the Microsoft implementation of MSF for Agile relies on Team Foundation Server
(TFS), which is designed to be flexible in accommodating other methodologies via a template-based architecture.
This means that TFS is limited in terms of the methodology-specific guidance that it can incorporate into its UI artifacts, such as screens, menus and workflow. By contrast, the Exia Process is able to provide methodology-specific guidance. The benefit to the Exia approach is said to be simplicity and less confusion
, while the drawback is loss of extensibility and flexibility.
(RUP) use a single graphical image to represent the key process flow. In RUP the image represents the phases and disciplines, showing the relative discipline loading in each phase. In the Exia Process, the image represents the interrelation and flow of the cyclical and iterative cycle and sub cycles. A criticism of RUP is its perception as being complex and even "bloated".
The Exia Process implementation seeks to mitigate this risk via a transparency layering scheme in the Exia Process diagram that is designed to allow progressive adoption while minimizing confusion. The company maintains
that this design enables ease of use and gradual adoption, while at the same time avoiding oversimplification of an inherently complex process.
Team Foundation Server
Team Foundation Server is a Microsoft product offering source control, data collection, reporting, and project tracking, and is intended for collaborative software development projects...
. The Exia Process manages user stories, test cases, bugs, tasks, issues and documentation. As well it provides schedule management by extending the Team Foundation Server iteration scheme.
Unlike the Agile methodology, which does not advocate a specific implementation, the Exia Process is prescriptive. The underlying philosophy is that many teams struggle to implement Agile because it lacks specific guidance about what to do and when, which can result in confusion and prolonged management debate. Exia argues that a tool that offers a comprehensive pathway, guiding the users through Agile adoption from basic concepts to advanced implementation, can save time and increase efficiency.
History
Exia Corp. was founded in January 2003 and the Apha version of The Exia Process was released in November 2010. The product is currently in the pre-release 1 phase and is available to the general public for trial or purchase. The first major customer for The Exia Process was a large Canadian crown corporation, whose feedback and trials contributed significantly to the design. A Canadian federal government agency was the next major customer, also contributing significantly to the design and evolution of the process.R&D
The Exia Process is based on 20 years of research of software development, the results of which were published in July 2009 in a paper entitled Challenges of Software Process Management and Suggestions for Improvement in Tools. The paper considers the alarming rate of failure of software projects and attempts to identify the underlying characteristics of a tool that would successfully increase the success rate of such projects. The paper identifies five such characteristics—flow, communicative transparency, process guidance, visualizations and integration—and argues why these characteristics are important in software-specific project management tools. Finally the paper considers what a tool might look like that implements these five characteristics.Design Characteristics
The Exia Process is different from other Agile implementations in several fundamental ways.Windows Based
Unlike competitive products, The Exia Process is not web based, but instead is a Windows application built using the Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation platform. It is felt by the architecture team that this approach provides higher performance and a richer, more immersive graphical user interface experience, at less cost than comparable web interfaces.Prescriptive about Process
The Exia Process is prescriptive about the Agile process to be followed. Unlike other Agile software products that provide only a toolkit, The Exia Process provides a prescriptive Guidance Window that is designed to lead the user through the steps required to master Agile. A unique feature of the Guidance Window is the ability to use transparency overlays to build up the guidance over time as the user achieves mastery. It is claimed that this has the benefit of allowing novice teams to start with a simple and understandable process, while still providing all the features required by more experienced teams.High Fidelity Storyboard
The Exia Process provides an unusually high fidelity Agile storyboard that is designed to very closely imitate a real world storyboard. Research by the company resulted in the finding that Agile proponents have extremely high affinity to physical Agile storyboards and are often reluctant to adopt Agile based software because the transition to the electronic storyboard results in the loss of considerable information conveyed in nuances of the physical equivalent. The information lost in the transition was identified through a research effort to be as follows:- Ability to discern whose card is whose with a glance.
- Ability to discern the complete history of each card’s edits at a glance.
- Ability to discern who made what edits by the handwriting.
- Ability to discern relative importance of details quickly. Important things are bolded, underlined, or otherwise highlighted. Unimportant things are small or scribbled.
- Ability to discern the approximate age of a card by how worn it is.
- Ability to prioritize by rank and by iteration with a single move across two dimensions.
- Ability to move two cards at once (swap position).
- Enough physical room for two or more people to discuss over.
- Ability to accommodate “extras” in the form of stickers, stars, fridge magnets if you have a metal board behind it, tacked on notes if it’s cork.
- Ablity to merge two stories by overlapping.
- Ablity to split a story by ripping the card in two.
- A story can overlap an iteration border and you can have an agreed meaning for that.
- Ability to delete instantly.
- Ability to add nearly instantly.
- Ability to undo any number of deletes.
- You can stand up in front of it, which gets you up and gives you energy.
- You can put things in the space around it.
- You can hang a bottle opener off it.
The philosophy behind the design of the Exia whiteboard is to stem the loss of information by providing an electronic version that performs as many of the above functions as possible.
Documentation Based on TFS work items
The Exia Process implements a unique approach to documentation management such as software requirements and use cases. Software documentation management is well known to be highly problematic. Exia research identified three key causes of the problems as follows; too high a level of granularity of version control, inability to integrate documentation into the other software artifacts such as user stories, bugs, tasks and issues and rejection due to learning curve transitioning from Microsoft Word. The Exia Process documentation tool addresses these issues by using the Team Foundation ServerTeam Foundation Server
Team Foundation Server is a Microsoft product offering source control, data collection, reporting, and project tracking, and is intended for collaborative software development projects...
work item as the fundamental storage unit of text and by providing a Word-like interface. Using the work item as the fundamental storage unit provides version control at the paragraph level rather than the traditional document level. It also allows tight integration of documentation with other work items, since each paragraph is a work item itself, and can be related to other work item using the core Team Foundation Server work item relational architecture.
The Word-like GUI is achieved through a custom UI developed in Windows Presentation Foundation. The user edits as though using a word document, but the underlying engine is in fact manipulating individual TFS work items in the background.
Comparison to other Agile software development solutions
Compared to other Agile software developmentAgile software development
Agile software development is a group of software development methodologies based on iterative and incremental development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams...
solutions, the Exia Process is more prescriptive, defining and providing a more explicit tool set that requires less configuration. For instance the JIRA
JIRA
Jira may refer to:* JIRA, software-engineering package* Journal of Iranian Research and Analysis* Jira, also known as Zilla, fictional character* Jira * Jira...
architecture, by contrast, encourages and enables extensive configuration of work item types and work flow. A drawback to the Exia approach is that certain desired operations may not be available, while a benefit is less confusion and configuration time.
Compared to MSF for Agile Software Development
The Exia Process is based on the MSF for Agile Software Developmentprinciples and implements the MSF Agile Software Development template installed in Team Foundation Server. A key difference is that the Microsoft implementation of MSF for Agile relies on Team Foundation Server
Team Foundation Server
Team Foundation Server is a Microsoft product offering source control, data collection, reporting, and project tracking, and is intended for collaborative software development projects...
(TFS), which is designed to be flexible in accommodating other methodologies via a template-based architecture.
This means that TFS is limited in terms of the methodology-specific guidance that it can incorporate into its UI artifacts, such as screens, menus and workflow. By contrast, the Exia Process is able to provide methodology-specific guidance. The benefit to the Exia approach is said to be simplicity and less confusion
, while the drawback is loss of extensibility and flexibility.
Compared to Rational Team Concert
Rational Team Concert is web based, while the Exia Process is Windows based. The advantage of the former is ease of deployment and multi-platform support. The advantage of the latter is claimed to be a richer and more responsive GUI, elimination of browser incompatibilities and ability to interact with desktop resources more easily, such as printers, files and local applications. The design philosophy of the Exia Process emphasizes minimalism and clarity at the expense of some functionality. The design of Team Concert emphasizes high functionality, which can result in more complex screens. Both implement a work item based architecture.Compared to the Rational Unified Process
Both the Exia Process and the Rational Unified ProcessRational Unified Process
The Rational Unified Process is an iterative software development process framework created by the Rational Software Corporation, a division of IBM since 2003...
(RUP) use a single graphical image to represent the key process flow. In RUP the image represents the phases and disciplines, showing the relative discipline loading in each phase. In the Exia Process, the image represents the interrelation and flow of the cyclical and iterative cycle and sub cycles. A criticism of RUP is its perception as being complex and even "bloated".
The Exia Process implementation seeks to mitigate this risk via a transparency layering scheme in the Exia Process diagram that is designed to allow progressive adoption while minimizing confusion. The company maintains
that this design enables ease of use and gradual adoption, while at the same time avoiding oversimplification of an inherently complex process.
See also
- Agile Software DevelopmentAgile software developmentAgile software development is a group of software development methodologies based on iterative and incremental development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams...
- Agile Project ManagementAgile managementAgile management or agile project management is an iterative method of determining requirements for engineering development projects in a highly flexible and interactive manner, for example agile software development. It requires empowered individuals from the relevant business, with supplier and...
- DSDMDynamic Systems Development MethodDynamic systems development method is an agile project delivery framework, primarily used as a software development method. DSDM was originally based upon the rapid application development method. In 2007 DSDM became a generic approach to project management and solution delivery...
- Extreme ProgrammingExtreme ProgrammingExtreme programming is a software development methodology which is intended to improve software quality and responsiveness to changing customer requirements...
- Iterative DevelopmentIterative and incremental developmentIterative and Incremental development is at the liver of a cyclic software development process developed in response to the weaknesses of the waterfall model...
- KanbanKanban, also spelled kamban, and literally meaning "signboard" or "billboard", is a concept related to lean and just-in-time production. According to Taiichi Ohno, the man credited with developing Just-in-time, kanban is one means through which JIT is achieved.Kanban is not an inventory control system...
- Lean Software DevelopmentLean software developmentLean software development is a translation of Lean manufacturing and Lean IT principles and practices to the software development domain. Adapted from the Toyota Production System, a pro-lean subculture is emerging from within the Agile community....
- Scrum DevelopmentScrum (development)Scrum is an iterative, incremental framework for project management often seen in agile software development, a type of software engineering....
- Software DocumentationSoftware documentationSoftware documentation or source code documentation is written text that accompanies computer software. It either explains how it operates or how to use it, and may mean different things to people in different roles....