ACM TechNews; An Agile Hypertext Design Methodology

An Agile Hypertext Design Methodology
University of Southampton (ECS) (07/01/07) Wills, Gary B.; Abbas, Noura; Chandrasekharan, Rakhi

Lead times for software are being reduced to a matter of months as a result of mounting pressure from customers, and organizations generally prefer an iterative, incremental software engineering strategy to alleviate the short lead time while supporting quality. Existing hypertext design models fail to consider the issue of the requirements and analysis process that usually fuels design, and the authors offer an agile, more holistic approach to hypertext application development to address this process. Elements of this method include personas (detailed descriptions of end users) and scenarios (textual descriptions of a persona's mode of interaction with the system and other personas); multimedia resources and ontologies, which require the knowledge of end users and stakeholders; storyboards that represent the user interface design; UML use cases built from the scenarios; and Web service design via the Service Responsibility and Interaction Design Method, which distinguishes abstract service profiles from their implementation. Agile software development methods are linked in certain principles, including the frequent delivery of functional software within a short period of time, intimate communications within the developer team and with clients, a greater focus on programming than documentation, and simplicity. The authors say their approach favors limited documentation that still guarantees effective communication within the team and with the customer. The process features a feedback loop via which developers continuously improve scenarios as the clients are refined. "In addition the use of Web service provides the rapid and flexible response to change, in that the complexity of the functionality can be delivered incrementally and at different iterations," the authors conclude.
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