Usability Evaluation of the Agile Software Process

Agile development methods are most flexible approach for software
development where the development team keeps on improving the software with
ongoing involvement of user. Despite its flexibility approach in software
development, agile methods are still lacking usability evaluation approaches in
their development, and integration of usability evaluation into agile development
methods is not adequately addressed. In Agile software development, emphasis
on requirement gathering and development of comprehensive feasibility reports
is not considered in detail. Traditional software development considered this
documentation as a quality attribute for the success of the project. Rapid
solutions provided by agile software methods leads to the deficiency of good
design and architecture which renders the project as expensive. As a remedy, a
proposed life cycle for agile software development has been designed. The
proposed life cycle outlined in this paper integrates usability evaluation
concepts and agile software methodologies for the development of interactive
software. To achieve the results, a survey form was formulated and carried out.
The results show a greater interest of usability at the initial stage of software
development along with user participation and involvement at each stage. The
experiment was conducted in the software company by developing an
interactive desktop-based application to evaluate the proposed life cycle and
IEEE Std. 12207-2008, ISO 9241:210 was used to validate the proposed
software model.