Towards an Agile Development Environment

The demand for software engineering support environment was evident since the 70s. It was necessary to control the integration between processes, tools and developers in order to increase software quality and productivity. Research projects produced several environments which introduced important concepts such as central artefact repository, well-defined and enactable software processes, as well as supporting tools. Later, agile methods emerged as a solution to overcome strict software processes, however it also demanded support tools to facilitate its adoption in software organizations. Several works report the use of agile practices and support tools, however, they do not bring about the structure of a software engineering environment that integrates the managerial cycle and agile practices. This paper presents the design of a software engineering environment which is based on Application Life Cycle (ALM) and SCRUM principles integrated with management and construction tools. The proposed design was validated with practitioners and a comparison with previous development environment is also presented. This work contributes to support novel enterprises to set up a work environment for agile practices.