Kieran Conboy

Agility from First Principles: Reconstructing the Concept of Agility in Information Systems Development

Awareness and use of agile methods has grown rapidly among the information systems development (ISD) community in recent years. Like most previous methods, the development and promotion of these methods have been almost entirely driven by practitioners and consultants, with little participation from the research community during the early stages of evolution. While these methods are now the focus of more and more research efforts, most studies are still based on XP, Scrum, and other industry-driven foundations, with little or no conceptual studies of ISD agility in existence. As a result, this study proposes that there are a number of significant conceptual shortcomings with agile methods and the associated literature in its current state, including a lack of clarity, theoretical glue, parsimony, limited applicability, and naivety regarding the evolution of the concept of agility in fields outside systems development. Furthermore, this has significant implications for practitioners, rendering agile method comparison and many other activities very difficult, especially in instances such as distributed development and large teams that are not conducive to many of the commercial agile methods. This study develops a definition and formative taxonomy of agility in an ISD context, based on a structured literature review of agility across a number of disciplines, including manufacturing and management where the concept originated, matured, and has been applied and tested thoroughly over time. The application of the texonomy in practice is then demonstrated through a series of thought trials conducted in a large multinational organization. The intention is that the definition and taxonomy can then be used as a starting point to study ISD method agility regardless of whether the method is XP or Scrum, agile or traditional, complete or fragmented, out-of-the-box or in-house, used as is or tailored to suit the project context.

Customising agile methods to software practices at Intel Shannon

Tailoring of methods is commonplace in the vast majority of software development projects and organisations. However, there is not much known about the tailoring and engineering of agile methods, or about how these methods can be used to complement each other. This study investigated tailoring of the agile methods, eXtreme programming (XP) and Scrum, at Intel Shannon, and involved experienced software engineers who continuously monitored and reflected on these methods over a 3-year period. The study shows that agile methods may individually be incomplete in supporting the overall development process, but XP and Scrum complement each other well, with XP providing support for technical aspects and Scrum providing support for project planning and tracking. The principles of XP and Scrum were carefully selected (only six of the 12 XP key practices were implemented, for example) and tailored to suit the needs of the development environment at Intel Shannon. Thus, the study refutes the suggestion that agile methods are not divisible or individually selectable but achieve their benefits through the synergistic combination of individual agile practices; rather, this study shows that an a la carte selection and tailoring of practices can work very well. In the case of Scrum, some local tailoring has led to a very committed usage by developers, in contrast to many development methods whose usage is limited despite being decreed mandatory by management. The agile practices that were applied did lead to significant benefits, including reductions in code defect density by a factor of 7. Projects of 6-month and 1-year duration have been delivered ahead of schedule, which bodes well for future ability to accurately plan development projects.

‘Lots done, more to do’: the current state of agile systems development research

European Journal of Information Systems (2009) 18, 281–284. doi:10.1057/ejis.2009.27 Agile systems development methods emerged as a response to the inability of previous plan-driven approaches to handle rapidly changing environments (Highsmith, 2002). Originating from the so-called ‘light-weight’ methods and promoted through the publication of the Agile Manifesto (2001), the agile method family have become highly prevalent in recent years. Meantime, agile system development research has gained momentum, as is evident from the increasing number of dedicated journal special issues, conferences, conference tracks and workshops. However, practitioners and consultants have largely driven the creation and dissemination of these methods. Agile research has lagged behind practice, as is often the case with new and emerging phenomena in Information Systems Development (ISD).

Toward a conceptual framework of agile methods: a study of agility in different disciplines

Since the software crisis of the 1960s, numerous methodologies have been developed to impose a disciplined process upon software development. It is now widely accepted that these methodologies are unsuccessful and unpopular due to their increasingly bureaucratic nature. Many researchers and practitioners are calling for these heavyweight methodologies to be replaced by agile methods. The Agile Manifesto was put forward in 2001, and several method instantiations, such as XP, SCRUM and Crystal exist. Each adheres to some principles of the Agile Manifesto and disregards others. This paper proposes that these Agile Manifesto principles are insufficiently grounded in theory, and are largely naive to the concept of agility outside the field of software development. This paper aims to develop a comprehensive framework of software development agility, through a thorough review of agility across many disciplines. We then elaborate and evaluate the framework in a software development context, through a review of software related research over the last 30 years.

Obstacles to decision making in Agile software development teams

Highlights? We conducted focus group with 43 Agile developers and managers. ? We conducted 6 case studies with 33 interviews across 5 organizations. ? Results indicate 6 decision obstacles Agile software development teams face. ? Decision obstacles were mapped to show effect on decision process. ? Obstacles affect strategic decision focus, backlog and team engagement. The obstacles facing decision making in Agile development are critical yet poorly understood. This research examines decisions made across four stages of the iteration cycle: Iteration Planning, Iteration Execution, Iteration Review and Iteration Retrospective. A mixed method approach was employed, whereby a focus group was initially conducted with 43 Agile developers and managers to determine decisions made at different points of the iteration cycle. Subsequently, six illustrative mini cases were purposefully conducted as examples of the six obstacles identified in these focus groups. This included interviews with 18 individuals in Agile projects from five different organizations: a global consulting organization, a multinational communications company, two multinational software development companies, and a large museum organization. This research contributes to Agile software development literature by analyzing decisions made during the iteration cycle and identifying six key obstacles to these decisions. Results indicate the six decision obstacles are unwillingness to commit to decisions; conflicting priorities; unstable resource availability; and lack of: implementation; ownership; empowerment. These six decision obstacles are mapped to descriptive decision making principles to demonstrate where the obstacles affect the decision process. The effects of these obstacles include a lack of longer-term, strategic focus for decisions, an ever-growing backlog of delayed work from previous iterations, and a lack of team engagement.

Method and developer characteristics for effective agile method tailoring: A study of XP expert opinion

It has long been acknowledged that software methods should be tailored if they are to achieve optimum effect. However comparatively little research has been carried out to date on this topic in general, and more notably, on agile methods in particular. This dearth of evidence in the case of agile methods is especially significant in that it is reasonable to expect that such methods would particularly lend themselves to tailoring. In this research, we present a framework based on interviews with 20 senior software development researchers and a review of the extant literature. The framework is comprised of two sets of factors—characteristics of the method, and developer practices—that can improve method tailoring effectiveness. Drawing on the framework, we then interviewed 16 expert XP practitioners to examine the current state and effectiveness of XP tailoring efforts, and to shed light on issues the framework identified as being important. The article concludes with a set of recommendations for research and practice that would advance our understanding of the method tailoring area.

Assimilation of agile practices in use

Agile method use in information systems development (ISD) has grown dramatically in recent years. The emergence of these alternative approaches was very much industry‐led at the outset, and while agile method research is growing, the vast majority of these studies are descriptive and often lack a strong theoretical and conceptual base. Insights from innovation adoption research can provide a new perspective on analysing agile method use. This paper is based on an exploratory study of the application of the innovation assimilation stages to understand the use of agile practices, focusing in particular on the later stages of assimilation, namely acceptance, routinisation and infusion. Four case studies were conducted, and based on the case study findings, the concepts of acceptance, routinisation and infusion were adapted and applied to agile software development. These adapted concepts were used to glean interesting insights into agile practice use. For example, it was shown that the period of use of agile practices does not have a proportional effect on their assimilation depths. We also reflected on the sequential assumption underlying the assimilation stages, showing that adopting teams do not always move through the assimilation stages in a linear manner.

Project failure en masse: a study of loose budgetary control in ISD projects

This paper investigates the tightness of budgetary control over projects in a large systems development multinational. This represents a case of extreme information systems development (ISD) failure en masse, where all but two of the 22 projects in a business unit went over budget, causing senior executives to refocus their strategic priorities and cancel all current and potential projects that followed. This study focuses specifically on the two best performing (12 and 4% under budget) and worst performing (223 and 320% over budget) of these projects. Using a framework drawn from control systems theory, this study examines the ‘tightness’ of budgetary control exerted over each project, and what was done or could have been done to avert such failure. The study then identifies a set of emerging factors affecting tight budgetary control in ISD.

Agile Practices: The Impact on Trust in Software Project Teams

Agile software development involves self-managing teams that are empowered and responsible for meeting project goals in whatever way they deem suitable. Managers must place more trust in such teams than they do in teams following more traditional development methodologies. The authors highlight how the use of agile practices can enhance trust amongst agile team members. They also present challenges that agile teams can face as a result of using agile practices. Their results are based on the findings from three case studies of agile software development teams.

Toward a Conceptual Framework of Agile Methods

Since the software crisis of the 1960’s, numerous methodologies have been developed to impose a disciplined process upon software development. It is now widely accepted that these methodologies are unsuccessful and unpopular due to their increasingly bureaucratic nature. Many researchers and practitioners are calling for these heavyweight methodologies to be replaced by agile methods. The Agile Manifesto was put forward in 2001, and several method instantiations, such as XP, SCRUM and Crystal exist. Each adheres to some principles of the Agile Manifesto and disregards others. This paper conducts a review of the literature on agility across many disciplines, in order to reach an all-encompassing notion of what agility is. This paper aims to develop a comprehensive framework of software development agility, through a thorough review of agility across many disciplines. We then elaborate and evaluate the framework in a software development context, through a review of software related research over the last 30 years.