This book presents agile methods (AMs) and open source development (OSD) from
an unconventional point of view. Even if these two worlds seem very different,
they present a relevant set of similarities and dependences that are identified and
analyzed throughout the book.
The book is organized in four sections. The first one introduces and compares
the agile and the open source (OS) movements analyzing their evolution, their main
values and principles, and their organizational models. The second section focuses
on some specific practices that are very relevant for both agile and OS movements
(testing, code ownership, and design), and presents two success stories of integrating
such worlds into a single and successful development process. The third section
focuses on empirical studies. It introduces a framework for the collection and the
comparison of empirical evidences and a set of empirical studies performed on agile
and OS projects and teams. The chapters of this section focus on single aspects of
the development process and present data collected in different kinds of experiments
performed in different contexts. The last section aims at presenting topics relevant
for industrial adoption, such as methodologies for selecting OS solutions to adopt
in companies (agile and not) and presents a catalog of OS tools that are widely
used in agile development. Since the large number of tools available may confuse
practitioners and researchers interested in experimenting some of the techniques
presented, the section aims at describing assessment methodologies and providing
a reference set of tools from which people can start.