Dataset Information

Agile methods in biomedical software development: a multi-site experience report.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Agile is an iterative approach to software development that relies on strong collaboration and automation to keep pace with dynamic environments. We have successfully used agile development approaches to create and maintain biomedical software, including software for bioinformatics. This paper reports on a qualitative study of our experiences using these methods.

Results

We have found that agile methods are well suited to the exploratory and iterative nature of scientific inquiry. They provide a robust framework for reproducing scientific results and for developing clinical support systems. The agile development approach also provides a model for collaboration between software engineers and researchers. We present our experience using agile methodologies in projects at six different biomedical software development organizations. The organizations include academic, commercial and government development teams, and included both bioinformatics and clinical support applications. We found that agile practices were a match for the needs of our biomedical projects and contributed to the success of our organizations.

Conclusion

We found that the agile development approach was a good fit for our organizations, and that these practices should be applicable and valuable to other biomedical software development efforts. Although we found differences in how agile methods were used, we were also able to identify a set of core practices that were common to all of the groups, and that could be a focus for others seeking to adopt these methods.

SUBMITTER: Kane DW

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1539031 | biostudies-literature | 2006 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Agile methods in biomedical software development: a multi-site experience report.

Kane David W DW Hohman Moses M MM Cerami Ethan G EG McCormick Michael W MW Kuhlmman Karl F KF Byrd Jeff A JA

BMC bioinformatics 20060530

<h4>Background</h4>Agile is an iterative approach to software development that relies on strong collaboration and automation to keep pace with dynamic environments. We have successfully used agile development approaches to create and maintain biomedical software, including software for bioinformatics. This paper reports on a qualitative study of our experiences using these methods.<h4>Results</h4>We have found that agile methods are well suited to the exploratory and iterative nature of scientif ...[more]

PMID: 16734914

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Project description:Software Development based on Scrum Agile in a distributed development environment plays a pivotal role in the contemporary software industry by facilitating software development across geographic boundaries. However, in the past different frameworks utilized to address the challenges like communication and collaboration in scrum agile distributed software development (SADSD) were notably inadequate in transparency, security, traceability, geographically dispersed location work agreements, geographically dispersed teamwork effectiveness, and trust. These deficiencies frequently resulted in delays in software development and deployment, customer dissatisfaction, canceled agreements, project failures, and disputes over payments between customers and development teams. To address these challenges of SADSD, this paper proposes a new framework called ChainAgile, which leverages blockchain technology. ChainAgile employs a private Ethereum blockchain to facilitate the execution of smart contracts. These smart contracts cover a range of functions, including acceptance testing, secure payments, requirement verification, task prioritization, sprint backlog, user story design and development and payments with the automated distribution of payments via digital wallets to development teams. Moreover, in the ChainAgile framework, smart contracts also play a pivotal role in automatically imposing penalties on customers for making late payments or for no payments and penalties on developers for completing the tasks that exceed their deadlines. Furthermore, ChainAgile effectively addresses the scalability limitations intrinsic in blockchain technology by incorporating the Interplanetary File System (IPFS) is used for storage solutions as an off-chain mechanism. The experimental results conclusively show that this innovative approach substantially improves transparency, traceability, coordination, communication, security, and trust for both customers and developers engaged in scrum agile distributed software development (SADSD).

Project description:BackgroundMoving to electronic health records (EHRs) confers substantial benefits but risks unintended consequences. Modern EHRs consist of complex software code with extensive local configurability options, which can introduce defects. Defects in clinical decision support (CDS) tools are surprisingly common. Feasible approaches to prevent and detect defects in EHR configuration, including CDS tools, are needed. In complex software systems, use of test-driven development and automated regression testing promotes reliability. Test-driven development encourages modular, testable design and expanding regression test coverage. Automated regression test suites improve software quality, providing a "safety net" for future software modifications. Each automated acceptance test serves multiple purposes, as requirements (prior to build), acceptance testing (on completion of build), regression testing (once live), and "living" design documentation. Rapid-cycle development or "agile" methods are being successfully applied to CDS development. The agile practice of automated test-driven development is not widely adopted, perhaps because most EHR software code is vendor-developed. However, key CDS advisory configuration design decisions and rules stored in the EHR may prove amenable to automated testing as "executable requirements."ObjectiveWe aimed to establish feasibility of acceptance test-driven development of clinical decision support advisories in a commonly used EHR, using an open source automated acceptance testing framework (FitNesse).MethodsAcceptance tests were initially constructed as spreadsheet tables to facilitate clinical review. Each table specified one aspect of the CDS advisory's expected behavior. Table contents were then imported into a test suite in FitNesse, which queried the EHR database to automate testing. Tests and corresponding CDS configuration were migrated together from the development environment to production, with tests becoming part of the production regression test suite.ResultsWe used test-driven development to construct a new CDS tool advising Emergency Department nurses to perform a swallowing assessment prior to administering oral medication to a patient with suspected stroke. Test tables specified desired behavior for (1) applicable clinical settings, (2) triggering action, (3) rule logic, (4) user interface, and (5) system actions in response to user input. Automated test suite results for the "executable requirements" are shown prior to building the CDS alert, during build, and after successful build.ConclusionsAutomated acceptance test-driven development and continuous regression testing of CDS configuration in a commercial EHR proves feasible with open source software. Automated test-driven development offers one potential contribution to achieving high-reliability EHR configuration. Vetting acceptance tests with clinicians elicits their input on crucial configuration details early during initial CDS design and iteratively during rapid-cycle optimization.

Dataset Information

Agile methods in biomedical software development: a multi-site experience report.

Background

Results

Conclusion

Publications

Agile methods in biomedical software development: a multi-site experience report.

Similar Datasets

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