What Makes Agile Software Development Agile

Date

2021-07-01

Author

Kuhrmann, Marco
Tell, Paolo
Hebig, Regina
Klunder, Jil Ann-Christin
Munch, Jurgen
Linssen, Oliver
Pfahl, Dietmar
Felderer, Michael
Prause, Christian
Macdonell, Steve
Nakatumba-Nabende, Joyce
Raffo, David
Beecham, Sarah
Tüzün, Eray
Lopez, Gustavo
Paez, Nicolas
Fontdevila, Diego
Licorish, Sherlock
Kupper, Steffen
Ruhe, Guenther
Knauss, Eric
Özcan Top, Özden
Clarke, Pau
Mccaffery, Fergal
Genero, Marcela
Vizcaino, Aurora
Piattini, Mario
Kalinowski, Marcos
Conte, Tayana
Prikladnicki, Rafael
Krusche, Stephan
Coşkunçay, Ahmet
Scott, Ezequiel
Calefato, Fabio
Pimonova, Svetlana
Pfeiffer, Rolf-Helge
Schultz, Ulrik Pagh
Heldal, Rogardt
Fazal-Baqaie, Masud
Anslow, Craig
Nayebi, Maleknaz
Schneider, Kurt
Sauer, Stefan
Winkler, Dietmar
Biffl, Stefan
Bastarrica, Cecilia
Richardson, Ita

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Together with many success stories, promises such as the increase in production speed and the improvement in stakeholders' collaboration have contributed to making agile a transformation in the software industry in which many companies want to take part. However, driven either by a natural and expected evolution or by contextual factors that challenge the adoption of agile methods as prescribed by their creator(s), software processes in practice mutate into hybrids over time. Are these still agile In this article, we investigate the question: what makes a software development method agile We present an empirical study grounded in a large-scale international survey that aims to identify software development methods and practices that improve or tame agility. Based on 556 data points, we analyze the perceived degree of agility in the implementation of standard project disciplines and its relation to used development methods and practices. Our findings suggest that only a small number of participants operate their projects in a purely traditional or agile manner (under 15%). That said, most project disciplines and most practices show a clear trend towards increasing degrees of agility. Compared to the methods used to develop software, the selection of practices has a stronger effect on the degree of agility of a given discipline. Finally, there are no methods or practices that explicitly guarantee or prevent agility. We conclude that agility cannot be defined solely at the process level. Additional factors need to be taken into account when trying to implement or improve agility in a software company. Finally, we discuss the field of software process-related research in the light of our findings and present a roadmap for future research.

Subject Keywords

Agile Software Development, Hybrid Development Methods, Survey Research, Software Development, Software Process

URI

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9496156
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/91616

Journal

IEEE Transactions On Software Engineering

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1109/tse.2021.3099532

Collections

Graduate School of Informatics, Article

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Citation Formats

M. Kuhrmann et al., “What Makes Agile Software Development Agile,” IEEE Transactions On Software Engineering, pp. 1–1, 2021, Accessed: 00, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9496156.