47P. Understanding Agile Software Development in Practice

Over the last ten years Agile Software Development (ASD) has received much attention from researchers and practitioners as an approach for dealing with change. However, the proper application area and the use of a mixed - agile and traditional, more plan-driven -approach are still much debated. In this paper, we report from a mission critical project that was considered agile by the involved staff, but which actually employed a mixed agile and plan-driven strategy. We introduce a framework, which allows for (1) descriptive analysis of the project, (2) its discussion against the agile values as presented in the agile manifesto, and (3) a comparison of findings to Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) theory. We contribute to the debate with rich insight about: which work practices were applied in practice? which of the applied work practices were agile and/or which were more plan-driven in nature? and which of the applied practices fit with CAS theory and/or with a more plan-driven perspective? The analysis of our case shows that some of the agile practices were used in a way that supported both agile values and a traditional focus on processes, documentation, and planning. Moreover, certain traditional practices were in line with CAS theory, while some agile practices fit both CAS and traditional concepts. We suggest that to understand ASD in practice it is relevant to investigate how the applied practices are actually used in the particular case and that the agile manifesto and CAS theory are useful, complementary lenses for doing so

Cultures of Agility – Agile Software Development in Practice

Agile Software Development (ASD) has gained much attention as an approach that provides values and principles for dealing with turbulent environments and change as they are now common for many systems development projects. Literature stresses the importance of organizational culture for agile development, but only little empirical research about their relationship has been conducted. On this background we carried out a cultural analysis in 3 organizations which perform systems and software development according to agile principles. We found that agile development thrives in different organizational cultures as long as the 4 core values are present to a significant extent. This is possible because agile methods bear to compromise even with central elements of the agile approach; this is the essence of agility

Bridging the gap between research and agile practice: an evolutionary model

There is wide acceptance in the software engineering field that industry and research can gain significantly from each other and there have been several initiatives to encourage collaboration between the two. However there are some often-quoted challenges in this kind of collaboration. For example, that the timescales of research and practice are incompatible, that research is not seen as relevant for practice, and that research demands a different kind of rigour than practice supports. These are complex challenges that are not always easy to overcome. Since the beginning of 2013 we have been using an approach designed to address some of these challenges and to bridge the gap between research and practice, specifically in the agile software development arena. So far we have collaborated successfully with three partners and have investigated three practitioner-driven challenges with agile. The model of collaboration that we adopted has evolved with the lessons learned in the first two collaborations and been modified for the third. In this paper we introduce the collaboration model, discuss how it addresses the collaboration challenges between research and practice and how it has evolved, and describe the lessons learned from our experience

Agile Research - Getting Beyond the Buzzword

Oh yeah, we\u27re an Agile shop, we gave up Waterfall years ago. - product owners, managers, or could be anyone else. You will seldom have a conversation with a product or software development team member without the agile buzzword thrown at you at the drop of a hat. It would not be an oversell to say that Agile software development has been adopted at a large scale across several big and small organizations. Clearly, Agile is an ideology that is working, which made me explore more on its applicability in research. As someone who has been in the Information Technology sector for more than a decade and a half, and a new entrant in the research community, I am inclined to uplift the best practices from my IT experience and evaluate implementing them in research. The idea is to assess the provocative metaphor of agile research and the different research philosophies around the concept. The aim is to explore Agile research methodology, its applicability and find the scenarios where it can add value and those where it may not

Mindfulness and agile software development

The field of information systems development (ISD) is still not well understood and suffers from a lack of sustainable theories which are firmly based on research of ISD practice. This is also true for agile software development (ASD). In this paper, we develop a framework based on the theory of mindfulness and map the main characteristics of mindfulness to the most prominent features of ASD. By applying the framework to a case study of ASD practice we demonstrate the relationship between the theory of mindfulness and ASD, and show the usefulness of our framework as a contribution to theorizing about ASD and to a better understanding of ASD in practice

Goals and challenges in hybrid software development approaches

The number of companies that use agile methods increases steadily. However, these companies often do not implement a pure agile approach but combine agile and plan-based methods to so-called hybrid development approaches. However, the development of these approaches is rather difficult for the companies, since agile and plan-based approaches often follow opposite concepts. To benefit from agile and plan-based approaches at the same time, the companies have to identify and address the conflicts between agile and plan-based methods. The conflicts depend on the goals that are pursued with the implementation of agile and plan-based methods. However, there is no overview of the exact goals that are pursued in hybrid approaches and which challenges and conflicts arise with them. Therefore, we conducted a systematic mapping study to gather and analyze the goals and challenges in hybrid development approaches. The mapping study is focused on literature that presents the actual needs and goals of companies and projects. Based on our results, we present the influence factors that cause conflicts in hybrid approaches and discuss how these conflicts can be addressed

Journey Towards Agility – A Retro- and Prospective Review

After more than 15 years since the Agile Manifesto and extensive research on agile software development (ASD) for nearly three decades, a comprehensive body of knowledge is available and is constantly growing. ASD is considered an effective way for managing software development projects in environments characterized by rapidly changing requirements. This study aims to shed light on the existing knowledge on ASD by applying a structured literature review and computer aided analysis consisting of distinct text mining techniques. We analyzed a sample of 1,376 papers and provide results from articles among relevant information systems research as well as computer science conferences and journals. Based on our approach, we are able to (1) evaluate key articles and journals, (2) analyze the development of ASD research in the last three decades and, most importantly, (3) identify research foci of the past as well as gaps in our knowledge on ASD

Agile software development in a context of plan-based organizations

Agile software development has increasingly been used in the last fifteen years with the goal of improving traditionally time-consuming and rather non-user friendly process of developing software code. As implications of agile development and its impact on employees are still unclear, it is important to understand the benefits, opportunities and limitations of this development or collaboration mechanism. Thus, empirical evidence with implications for decision makers in the field of corporate policy and software development is an open research field. This master thesis analyzes the potentials of agile software development and how this approach can be used to support the development processes in companies, in terms of efficiency, shorter time-to-market as well as better customer fit of the developed products or services. By exploring some of the key features of different methods and processes, the potentials and limitations of the selected approaches are analyzed and linked to recent literature insights

The Perceived Impact of the Agile Development and Project Management Method Scrum on Process Transparency in Information Systems Development

This paper contributes to research on information systems development (ISD) with a case study that demonstrates the positive impact of the agile development and project management method Scrum on process transparency in ISD projects. It is part of a project for which we developed a framework comprising of the six concepts productivity, quality, team leadership, employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction, and process transparency for investigating the impact of Scrum. It provides operationalizations of the latter concept through five identified indicators. Despite the fact that the case unit had challenges, the indicators identified the areas where it managed to exploit the potential of Scrum with regard to increasing process transparency. The research results are related to earlier findings concerning the other concepts. They are discussed both with regard to the existing Scrum literature as well as to complex adaptive systems (CAS) - a foundation for ISD and agile development