Rail Human Factors Engineering within Agile Software Development Practices

Agile software development is a set of practices and principles that is becoming increasingly popular in the engineering of staff- and customer- facing technology within the rail industry. Agile offers benefits in terms of... [ view full abstract ]

Agile software development is a set of practices and principles that is becoming increasingly popular in the engineering of staff- and customer- facing technology within the rail industry. Agile offers benefits in terms of reduced cost and risk by emphasising early delivery of incremental functionality. Under Agile principles,  products are developed through collaboration between stakeholders (such as suppliers, sponsors, and end-users) using short development cycles, leading to phased releases and the opportunity for iterative improvement. This flexible development approach allows requirements to develop as the understanding of the product/system grows over time. This is important as the industry works towards  'Digital Railway' goals while seeking to improve investment value for money. 

The UK rail industry has well established standards and practices for Human Factors Engineering (HFE). However, these standards are based on conventional systems engineering approaches and do not provide specific guidance on how HFE activities can be planned, undertaken and integrated into projects using Agile development principles. 

The purpose of this paper is to present HFE practices and principles that we have found to be successful when working with development teams following Agile methods. Our experiences in this area are presented as a framework of principles that is supported through case study evidence.