Agile Software Development Case Study: Product Simulations within Embedded Environment: Master's thesis

This study presents a new approach for the development of smart card systems: product simulation. The base for the study was created by examining the special characteristics of embedded systems and smart card technology. Since security is a significant part of smart card systems, security issues individual to embedded systems were examined. The principles of agile software development, which has proven to speed up the development in traditional software development, were researched to provide a basis for comparison to the approach. The empirical evaluation was implemented by conducting a case application in the smart card environment. The case application constructed an electronic lock management system, which purpose is to ease the key management problem which emerges when distributing temporary access to buildings. The case application was implemented in two phases: first the concept of the system was defined and the security of the system was analysed with product simulation and then the system was implemented. The experiences of the case application were then analysed and compared to the principles of agile software development. The experiences from the case application indicate that product simulation supports agile development principles in many respects. Using product simulation in the smart card environment was analysed and guidelines for future development are presented in the thesis. Product simulation fits especially in the simulation of the communication interface of a smart card system. The applicability of product simulation in security analysis was evaluated. The results indicate that product simulation can be used to a certain extent in the security analysis of a smart card system