Developing secure websites using Feature Driven Development (FDD): postgraduate vs undergraduate case study

Abstract

Agile processes, like Feature Driven Development (FDD), Scrum and Extreme Programming (XP), have been criticized for not providing a suitable framework for building secure software. In order to find the real-life issues, this case study was initiated to investigate whether the existing FDD can withstand requirements change and software security altogether. The case study was performed in controlled environment – in a course called Application Development—a four credit hours course at UTM. The course began by splitting up the class to seven software development groups and two groups were chosen to implement the existing process of FDD. After students were given an introduction to FDD, they started to adapt the processes to their proposed system. Then students were introduced to the basic concepts on how to make software systems secure. Though, they were still new to security and FDD, however, this study produced a lot of interest among the students. The students seemed to enjoy the challenge of creating secure system using FDD model.