At a dinner last week I discussed agile development practices with some colleagues. They work in the AM (application management) part of the company so we ended up discussing how these practices are applicable for AM.

We all very soon agreed upon that agile practices are indeed applicable for AM. Some of them are mentioned here:

• Pair-programming: Reduces risk of introducing new errors.
• Continuous integration: Enforces the code base to be 100% up-to-date and tested at any time.
• Test-first: Gives immediate feedback on when an error is fixed and helps extending the test suite.

Scrum is excellent for an AM organization. Just organize all problem reports as a product backlog and plan the ones you want to deliver in the next patch in a sprint backlog. Make sure you make room for urgent matters in the sprint backlog.