Great news for Agile lovers. The world's first Agile operating system, Agile Sprint System (ASS), has gone into BETA release. As in common with other operating systems, ASS is responsible for managing hardware and software resources of a computer. This of course includes the usual tasks of memory management, I/O, security, networking and provision of a file system. But ASS goes further - incorporating Agile at it's very heart. Here are a few features to look forward to when you get your hands on an ASS.
Agile/IP now fully supported. I first mentioned this very exciting addition to the IP protocol family, in a previous blog a year or two back. For those who are unaware I'll quickly re-cap Agile/IP.
1. An extension of the OSI network model.
2. Agile stories are entered at the Application Layer. This is typically done via an application capable of using the AgileNet protocol. This protocol is an extension of the Telnet protocol.
3. The Presentation Layer then converts these Agile stories to XP Tasks using extended MIME encoding.
4. The Session Layer provides checkpoints which can be used for carrying out retros by a lower layer in the OSI model.
5. The Transport Layer helps move the XP task data between Scrum members without the latter having to know anything about computers.
6. The Network, Data and Physical layers are the same as in the standard OSI model - with one major exception. And that is security is added to the Agile data packets. This is done by injecting them with the Wide Area Network Kerberos Authentication policy (WANKA). These enlightened WANKAs, as the Agile packets are now known, are capable of delivering their tasks in any order they wish. Unlike TCP, however,
guarantee of delivery is never given by these WANKAs. If a delivery fails, they may try again - then again they may go off into a Spike and get side tracked. But thats a price well worth paying to be truly Agile.
Security The WANKA policy has been added to all file access now. It is a cut down version of the one used in Agile/IP and known as Mini WANKA.
Memory Management Thanks to the use of Binary Obstack Library Overlap eXtension (BOLOX), memory is now fully managed in an Agile manner. This means no up front memory usage design is done by the Operating System. Instead memory is used in a haphazard manner.
GUI ASS has an advance user interface. Everything looks a nice shade of pink, giving it a rose spectacled look about it. Very Agile I thought.
More reviews in the near future. If anyone else gets some ASS, please leave your comments here too.
