Agile Software Development: Adaptive Systems Principles and Best Practices

Meso, Peter; Jain, Radhika

doi:10.1201/1078.10580530/46108.23.3.20060601/93704.3

Cited by 122 publications

(87 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…A system is an interconnected set of elements forming a whole that has properties belonging to the whole. A complex adaptive system uses transformative feedback loops to enable continuous improvement, has emergent and potentially unpredictable behaviour, distributed rather than centralised control; a shallow rather than a deep structure; and is enhanced by growth and evolution [30]. From this viewpoint an agile adoption should transform the whole organisation [34].…”

Section: How Do Practitioner Challenges Manifest Themselves In Organimentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There is a long tradition of applying systems theory to organisations [28,29]. Also, several authors have used a Complex Adaptive Systems view to explain agile methods in organisational contexts [30][31][32][33]. A system is an interconnected set of elements forming a whole that has properties belonging to the whole.…”

Section: How Do Practitioner Challenges Manifest Themselves In Organimentioning

confidence: 99%

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The challenges that challenge: Engaging with agile practitioners’ concerns

Gregory

Barroca

Sharp

et al. 2016

Information and Software Technology

106

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Context: There continues to be concern that research is not addressing the challenges that practice faces. For the benefit of academia and industry, researchers need to be aware of practitioners' challenges and their context so that relevant and applicable research is undertaken.Objective: This paper investigates two research questions: what challenges do agile practitioners face?and, how do practitioner challenges manifest themselves in an organisational setting? It aims to map the practitioner challenge landscape, explore challenge characteristics, compare findings with previous literature and identify implications for research that is relevant to practice.Method: A combination of methods was used: elicitation of practitioner challenges collected using a Challenge Wall at a series of practitioner events; organisational Case Study using interviews, document analysis and observation; and online Survey. Findings were then compared to previous publications. Results:Challenges collected from the Challenge Wall were grouped under 27 subthemes and seven themes: Claims and Limitations, Organisation, Sustainability, Culture, Teams, Scale, and Value.Investigating one challenge in the Case Study uncovered a set of new challenges, which were interrelated. Over 50% of survey respondents experienced challenges highlighted in the Case Study. Conclusion:The landscape of agile practitioner challenges is complex and intertwined. Some challenges, such as doing agile in a non-agile environment, are multi-dimensional, affect many aspects of practice, and may be experienced simultaneously as business, organisational, social and adaptation problems. Some challenges, such as understanding cultural change or measuring agile value, persist and are hard to address, while others, such as adoption, change focus over time. Some challenges, such as governance and contracts, are under-researched, while others, such as business and IT transformation, have been researched but findings have not had the expected impact. Researchers wishing to address practitioner challenges need to treat them in context rather than in isolation and improve knowledge transfer.

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Section: How Do Practitioner Challenges Manifest Themselves In Organimentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: How Do Practitioner Challenges Manifest Themselves In Organimentioning

confidence: 99%

The challenges that challenge: Engaging with agile practitioners’ concerns

Gregory

Barroca

Sharp

et al. 2016

Information and Software Technology

106

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Augustine et al (2005) argue that software projects are complex adaptive systems and build a CAS-based agile project management framework tailored for XP, but their work is mainly based on their experience of rescuing a mission-critical product-development project. In contrast, Meso and Jain (2006) start by identifying seven CAS principles and then map them to agile practices (such as frequent releases, minimal planning and continuous learning) suggested by various agile methods. Although Meso and Jain's work shows that applying CAS in the study of agile software development could yield fruitful insights of agile organizations and practices, their work remains conceptual and empirical evidence has yet to be collected to validate the links they draw between CAS and agile practices.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Coevolving Systems and the Organization of Agile Software Development

Vidgen

Wang

2009

Information Systems Research

242

184

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Despite the popularity of agile methods in software development and increasing adoption by organizations there is debate about what agility is and how it is achieved. The debate suffers from a lack of understanding of agile concepts and how agile software development is practised. This paper develops a framework for the organization of agile software development that identifies enablers and inhibitors of agility and the emergent capabilities of agile teams. The work is grounded in complex adaptive systems (CAS) and draws on three principles of coevolving systems: match coevolutionary change rate, maximise self-organizing, and synchronize exploitation and exploration. These principles are used to study the processes of two software development teams, one a team using eXtreme Programming (XP) and the other a team using a more traditional, waterfall-based development cycle. From the cases a framework for the organisation of agile software development is developed. Time pacing, self-management with discipline and routinisation of exploration are among the agile enablers found in the cases studies while event pacing, centralised management and lack of resources allocated to exploration are found to be inhibitors to agility. Emergent capabilities of agile teams that are identified from the research include coevolution of business value, sustainable working with rhythm, sharing and team learning, and collective mindfulness.

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“…When the actual events occur in the natural world (for instance, inventory is moved from one place to another), relating empirical traces to actual events is a rather straightforward problem of physical measurement. Many of the events we wish to observe in IS research are, however, either social constructions of the relevant communities of practitioners (such as agile software development practices [Meso and Jain 2006]) or experiences of individual people (such as 'feeling informed', in our case). In both these cases, critical realism still holds that the events are real but that now they are in the transitive domain of the social.…”

Section: Construct Validitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Information Systems Foundations Part Three : The Role of Design Science

Gregor¹,

Hart²

2010

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Agile Software Development: Adaptive Systems Principles and Best Practices

Cited by 122 publications

References 35 publications

The challenges that challenge: Engaging with agile practitioners’ concerns

The challenges that challenge: Engaging with agile practitioners’ concerns

Coevolving Systems and the Organization of Agile Software Development

Information Systems Foundations Part Three : The Role of Design Science

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