Coevolving Systems and the Organization of Agile Software Development

Vidgen, Richard; Wang, Xiaofeng

doi:10.1287/isre.1090.0237

Cited by 242 publications

(209 citation statements)

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“…Using thought trials, the taxonomy showed that agility of a method and its underlying components can be tested in a generic sense; practices publicly accepted to be agile might not actually contribute to agility in every instance, and conversely, practices not traditionally recognized for their agility might make a significant contribution. This notion of agile capabilities, also referred to by Vidgen and Wang (2009) in this journal issue, represents a distinct departure from current thinking on ISD agility, where it is often crudely measured by the number of XP or Scrum practices used, regardless of their suitability to the project context or how they are implemented. In addition, the definition and taxonomy both have implications on the conceptual shortcomings of the agile method literature discussed earlier.…”

Section: Definition and Taxonomy Of Isd Agilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Conboy

2009

Information Systems Research

585

431

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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.

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Section: Definition and Taxonomy Of Isd Agilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Conboy

2009

Information Systems Research

585

431

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“…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%

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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“…They have a long tradition in IT development projects and are currently still broadly used, especially in the manufacturing industry [35,43]. Traditional methods are characterized by a pre-planning stage that is followed by the execution, which makes them less flexible in comparison to agile methods [9,43]. Additionally, unlike agile methods, they have a clear hierarchy within the team [9].…”

Section: Agile and Traditional Project Management Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Traditional methods are characterized by a pre-planning stage that is followed by the execution, which makes them less flexible in comparison to agile methods [9,43]. Additionally, unlike agile methods, they have a clear hierarchy within the team [9]. The collaboration is less close than in an agile project team.…”

Section: Agile and Traditional Project Management Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On the contrary, teams that follow traditional project management methods are selected based on their capabilities to conduct a pre-planned task [9]. Due to these differences in the way the team collaborates and the team conducts tasks, the formation of subgroups is supposed to differ between projects with agile methods and projects with traditional methods.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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