Lessons Learned from Developing Second Life Applications

Second Life has appeared in the media more frequently in the recent months as it is promised to deliver much richer user experiences in the immersive environment. Its potential applications are still being explored by a rapidly growing user population, and IBM has been one of the strongest supporters of the initiative. Although creation of objects and scripting of their behaviours in Second Life are relatively easy, our recent experiences suggest that a disciplined software engineering approach is required to develop a final product that meets all acceptance criteria at the highest quality. The complexities associated with the development of quality Second Life applications are derived from a number of different factors. Firstly, a conceptually innocent Second Life application could involve a wide range of different technology that require different engineering approaches. Secondly, the sponsor of a project is typically unable to clearly define the acceptance criteria upfront because Second Life is a relatively new concept for business applications. This is equally true from the development team's perspective since the environment is evolving. Having stated a couple of complexities associated with Second Life application development, the agile programming approach appears suitable. It is typically applied to applications with the characteristics of frequent requirement changes, low criticality, and smaller development teams. In this presentation, we will present our experiences on the complexities associated with the development of Second Life applications. We will evaluate the suitability of the agile approach to development, and our thoughts on how to go about developing quality applications involving Second Life.