Real-World Solutions for Developing High-Quality PHP Frameworks and Applications

Chapter 13. swoodoo: A True Agile Story

Lars Jankowfsky

WHAT'S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• The evolution of swoodoo

• The introduction of Extreme Programming to swoodoo development

• Planning new features

• Techniques to make refactoring successful

INTRODUCTION

Before we start with our agile story, let us throw some light on the swoodoo company so you have a better idea about us. The swoodoo flight search engine is being developed in Germany and Lithuania. The project is managed from our Munich office in Bavaria. There we have a few people who take care of the user interface design, product management, and software architecture of the swoodoo project. Our development team of more than 10 developers is located in Kaunas, Lithuania. The development in Lithuania is not a usual offshoring because we founded our own company there. The advantage of running our own team is vital compared to pure contractor work, which is widespread in the IT industry. When you have such a small team, the team spirit and dedication to the project become extremely important.

Over the last few years, our team has gradually grown from 4 to 13 members. This slow increase has helped us in integrating new members efficiently. Now let's go back in history and learn more about the evolution of swoodoo.

EVOLUTION: ONLY THE STRONG SURVIVE

Back in 2003, the first low-cost carriers showed up with really cheap flight offers. In those days, there was no simple way to find the best deals, besides browsing the websites of the low-cost airlines. ...