GAIA

Global Agile InnovAtion

From Idea to Product within 6 Months!

This motto represents the bold and ambitious objective of the FLEXI project, a pan-European ITEA2 (Information Technology for European Advancement) project which focuses on merging agile and innovative practices and assisting industry partners in achieving shorter development life cycles.

The GAIA (Global Agile InnovAtion ) project will implement relevant aspects of the FLEXI project in Ireland. GAIA has been funded by Enterprise Ireland and represents an investment of €550K. The Irish partners are Fidelity Investments (FISC) Ireland, Lero - the Irish Software Engineering Research Centre at the University of Limerick , NUI Galway and Rovsing Ireland.

GAIA will focus on combining agile methods with innovation practices in a global context. In recent years, agile methods have emerged as a very popular alternative approach to software deve lopment, and have been well received by industry. FISC and Rovsing have both decided to implement these new and emerging approaches, hoping to ensure efficient development of reliable and safe systems, products and services in aglobal development context, and thus increasing quality, productivity and profitability.

Specifically, FISC wishes to leverage this in the new Irish R& D Centre they are establishing. Rovsing will use this to consolidate their position in thecompetitive mission- and life-critical aerospace and automotive sectors. In this project, the research institutions will transfer their knowledge and expertise in the area, to expand (i) agile method training, implementation and customisation, (ii) implementation of project management techniquessuitable for an agile development environment, (iii) analysis of how agile methods can be adjusted to ensure FISC and Rovsing still meet their required SPICE and CMMI quality standards, and (iv) development of an innovation framework and accompanying metrics to ensure that innovation is still facilitated and encouraged in an agile environment.