Agile Development and Micro Focus Development Tools

The sections Introduction to Agile Methods and Agile Development Workflow introduce the idea of Agile software development and summarize how Agile development works as a process. This section looks at the Agile development process and shows how different products available from Micro Focus fit into and add value to that process.

The diagram below shows the process presented in the topic Agile Development Workflow but has been updated to indicate which Micro Focus products are appropriate at different parts of the process. Although this diagram refers to Micro Focus products, the process described does not require the use of Micro Focus products, so if you are already using a third-party product for one part of the process you can continue to work with that and use Micro Focus products to integrate with it.

where the numbered steps are as follows:

1. Use Micro Focus Atlas to create a list of requirements from customer feedback.
2. Use Micro Focus Atlas to create a list of requirements based on your internal needs. These can be for anything at all, including new features, bug fixes, infrastructure or systems work, and technical debt.
3. Use Micro Focus Atlas to combine your customers' requirements and your internal requirements. Once you have combined the requirements in Atlas you can export them to Micro Focus Rhythm as a product backlog. The product backlog is a prioritized list of the work that your development team will undertake to add the different items from your customers' and internal requirements.
4. Use Micro Focus Rhythm to create sprint backlogs, which you use to define and track the work on the product backlog that will be done by the development team in a series of sprints. Sprints are also often referred to as "iterations".

   The length of a sprint is typically between one and four weeks and is usually fixed for the duration of a project.

   During each sprint, developers take items from the sprint backlog, work on them, and complete them by the end of the sprint.

   At the end of each sprint, the items on that sprint's backlog must be completed; not just coded, but tested, documented, and integrated into a working product that could be deployed (if required).

5. Use Visual COBOL to produce a deliverable product package, if required.

   When using Visual COBOL, developers can use the complete array of analysis, intelligence and reporting tools provided by COBOL Analyzer to quickly gain a full understanding of the applications they are working on. Integration between Rhythm and Visual COBOL means developers can easily work on code changes and keep Rhythm's status information up to date at the same time.

   At the end of a sprint you return to the Agile planning stage to create the next sprint backlog.

   At the end of the project you return to the requirements gathering stage to create the new product backlog.

The following list gives a very brief summary of each of the Micro Focus products that play a part in the Agile development process:

• Atlas

  Micro Focus Atlas is an Agile requirements and delivery platform that enables teams to create products in a much more collaborative and flexible way in comparison to other requirements management tools.

• COBOL Analyzer

  Micro Focus COBOL Analyzer is powerful code analysis and visualization toolset, designed to address the challenges of working with large-scale, complex applications.

  COBOL Analyzer enables you to quickly gain a thorough understanding of your applications, meaning that you reduce the amount of time it takes you to make your changes and you can have more confidence that your changes have the desired effect and do not introduce any new issues.

  You can also use COBOL Analyzer to run queries to determine if your code conforms to your in-house standards. Any code that does not conform to your standards can be flagged as an error following a commit or during the build process.

• Rhythm

  Micro Focus Rhythm is the enterprise-class planning and tracking solution for Agile software projects.

  Rhythm has been designed to integrate easily with Atlas and Visual COBOL, as well as with third-party issue-tracking, version control and requirements management tools.

• Visual COBOL

  Micro Focus Visual COBOL is the next-generation solution for COBOL application development and deployment. It enables you to modernize COBOL systems using Visual Studio and Eclipse as well as deploy COBOL applications and services to new platforms, including .NET, JVM, and the cloud.

  The following features of Visual COBOL make it an invaluable part of the Agile development process:

  • Integration with SCC-compliant source code control systems to enable you to work seamlessly with your source code.
  • Integration into Eclipse provides useful debugging features such as colorization, error flagging, and intelligent copybook handling to enable you to quickly track down any issues, establish their cause, and make your edits.
  • Reverse Debug and Live Recording are features that enable you to create a recording of an application's execution then load the recording into the debugger.

    With the recording loaded into the debugger you can monitor everything that influenced the running of the program (such as all input, disk access, and keyboard strokes) and because the debugger lets you move backwards and forwards through the execution path you can easily focus on potential causes of crashes or other unexpected behavior in the application.

  • The Micro Focus Unit Testing Framework, an xUnit-style testing framework, includes much of the architecture you would expect of an xUnit framework, enabling you to create, compile, run, and debug unit tests from either the command line or the Visual COBOL IDE.
  • Core dump debugging. When an application crashes you can arrange for its state to be saved to disk, in a core dump file, which can indicate where the error occurred in the source code, the contents of memory at the time of the error, and the values of any variables and expressions set at the time. You can then use the core dump file to help debug the problems.
  • Wait for attachment enables you to attach the debugger only when a particular piece of code is executed.
  • Integration with Micro Focus Rhythm means that you can navigate and update your sprint backlog without even having to leave Eclipse.
  • Remote debugging enables you to debug programs that are running on a different computer from the one on which you are using.
  • The Consolidated Tracing Facility (CTF) produces detailed diagnostic information that can be invaluable in diagnosing problems when you can't easily attach a debugger.