Literature review of flexibility attributes: A flexibility framework for software developing organization

Abstract

Software developing organizations strive to achieve flexibility to maintain a competitive advantage. There is no common understanding of what characterize flexibility for a software organization beyond the scope of the software product. Without a common understanding, it is difficult to evaluate the degrees of flexibility of software development approaches. The aim of this literature review is to collect attributes that characterize flexibility. The collected attributes are consolidated into a flexibility framework with 3 main attributes: properties of change, flexibility perspectives, and flexibility enablers. The resulting flexibility framework is then used to evaluate Agile and Lean practices. The evaluation shows that Agile and Lean practices address many flexibility attributes. However, some attributes are not addressed, such as infrastructure flexibility and strategic flexibility. On the basis of our evaluation, the classifications of flexibility attributes that we present in this paper could be used to aid software organization flexibility evaluation.

A preliminary checklist for capturing baseline situations in studying the impacts of agile practices introduction

“…Workforce. In manufacturing and management, hiring highly skilled individual is important to be flexible [9]. Four of our interviewees indicated that having good technical skills, product knowledge, and development experience is important for successful Agile practice adoption.…”

“…Constituents are the components that make up a software organization, they are: (1) workforce -human resources and their skills and knowledge, (2) management and organization structure -deals with leadership, the organization hierarchy and roles, and coordination between the constituents, (3) process -concerted activities that takes place in the organization, (4) infrastructure -technology platforms required to conceive, build, and release the product or service [8,14]. The focus on internal constituents is selected because introducing Agile practices can affect these constituents [9].…”

“…The checklist was developed from a literature study [9] and interviews with 11 industry practitioners. The resulting checklist was then validated with seven experts in academia, see Figure 1.…”

“…The follow up interviews inquired: (1) rationales for introducing the Agile practices at the time that they were introduced, (2) rationales for abandoning one or more practices, and (3) the impacts of adding, or abandoning Agile practices over time. From the interviews, we identified the potential components of the checklist, which was then complemented by the literature review [9].…”

“…The aim of the literature review was to identify flexibility attributes in inter-disciplinary literature and map them against Agile practices. The detailed description of the literature review process can be found in [9]. The literature review identified known techniques and principles in management and manufacturing that are well aligned with Agile practices and principles.…”