Grounded Theory is a research method that generates theory from data and is useful for understanding how people resolve problems that are of concern to them. Although the method looks deceptively simple in concept, implementing Grounded Theory research can often be confusing in practice. Furthermore, despite many papers in the social science disciplines and nursing describing the use of Grounded Theory, there are very few examples and relevant guides for the software engineering researcher. This paper describes our experience using classical (i.e., Glaserian) Grounded Theory in a software engineering context and attempts to interpret the canons of classical Grounded Theory in a manner that is relevant to software engineers. We provide model to help the software engineering researchers interpret the often fuzzy definitions found in Grounded Theory texts and share our experience and lessons learned during our research. We summarize these lessons learned in a set of fifteen guidelines.

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For the agile software development community, agility is defined by the values expressed in the agile manifesto. But in concrete terms, what does it mean for a software project to be agile? US Air Force Colonel John Boyd defined agility as the ability to operate the Observation-Orientation-Decision-Action (OODA) loop faster than an adversary. Agility therefore depends on the tempo at which we can exploit the OODA loop, and it is culture, not methodologies or tools that determine our OODA loop speed. This definition of agility has implications for the software development community. This short paper introduces Colonel Boyd, the OODA loop, the factors which influence OODA loop speed and the possible research opportunities into software engineering culture we are considering.

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