Avoidance of the term agile in software engineering: Necessary and possible

Abstract

The term agile is frequently used in IT especially in the area of software engineering. The broad pervasiveness of the term agile is astonishing, because it is not well defined in the area of software engineering. The fuzziness of the term agile comes with the danger of ill‐founded decisions and ideological discussions. Both slow down the gain in knowledge in the domain of software engineering. The term agile should therefore not be used either in science nor in the industry.This article provides a critical discussion of the term agile. By using a three‐layered abstraction concept for software development processes, the use of the term agile can be avoided.