Is Scrum and XP suitable for CSE Development?

This article discusses the question if Scrum and XP is well suited for development of Computational Science and Engineering (CSE) software. The reason for choosing Scrum and XP is based on two facts. Firstly, CSE developers are not used to formal processes for software development and Scrum and XP are informal in nature, hence easier to adopt. Secondly CSE projects are often once-off and aimed at producing scientific results rather than commercial software, so the overhead of a process or methodology needs to be kept at a minimum. Scrum and XP are focused on producing software, thus keeping everything else, i.e. the overhead to a minimum, a fact that benefits CSE development. In this article, the characteristics of Scrum and XP in particular and agile development in general are evaluated against the needs of CSE developers. The results show that almost all the key points in both methodologies are well suited for CSE development and that agile development in general is a good match with CSE.