Agile software development: adaptive systems principles and best practices

Abstract

Today’s environments of increasing business change require software development methodol-ogies that are more adaptable. This article examines how complex adaptive systems (CAS) the-ory can be used to increase our understanding of how agile software development practices can be used to develop this capability. A mapping of agile practices to CAS principles and three dimensions (product, process, and people) results in several recommendations for “best practices ” in systems development. ODAY’S SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT units face old and new risks, including shortfalls in real-time performance, ex-ternally performed tasks, externally fur-nished components, unrealistic schedules and budgets, development of wrong or unwanted information systems (IS) solutions, obsolete features, and changes in requirements from multiple sources [including customers, tech-nology, social factors, overhead, and competi-tion (Conboy, Fitzgerald, & Golden, 2005)] that need to be implemented at lightning speed (Kwak & Stoddard, 2004). Thus, organizations put a premium on software development ap-proaches that increase their responsiveness to business change. Agile software development methodologies provide organizations with an ability to rapidly evolve IS solutions (Highsmith, 1999; Suther-land & van den Heuvel, 2002). To date, these methodologies have been employed primaril