CSC News

October 29, 2004

Lucas Layman Receives Second in ACM Competition

Lucas Layman, a computer science Ph.D. student at NC State, received second place in the graduate category of the ACM Student Research Competition held last week in Vancouver, B.C., in conjunction with the OOPSLA (Object Oriented Programming, Systems, and Applications) 2004 conference.

Layman is working as a research assistant with Dr. Laurie Williams, assistant professor, investigating the effects of Agile Software Development practices, such as Extreme Programming, in industry. He is currently working with groups at IBM, Sabre Airline Solutions, and Tekelec to study the effects of Agile practices on requirements engineering, production quality, and customer satisfaction. Their work is funded by the Center for Advanced Computing and Communication, under their core research program for Analyzing Emerging Software Development Methodologies and Practices.

He received the award for his research report: "Empirical Investigation of the Impact of Extreme Programming Practices on Software Projects."

Abstract
Extreme Programming (XP) is an agile software development methodology composed of several practices that purportedly yield high quality and high customer satisfaction. However, there has been a lack of formal investigation of these claims. We structured an evaluation framework for conducting case studies of industrial XP teams. Results of running longitudinal case studies with IBM and Sabre Airline Solutions indicate that product quality and productivity of small, co-located teams is increased with the use of XP.

-rzewnicki-

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