XP 2019 Panel: Agile, the Next 20 Years (original) (raw)
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Trends and emerging areas of agile research
ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes, 2014
The PhD symposium of XP2014, the 15th International Conference on Agile Software Development, was organized as a half-day event prior to the main conference program. Seven PhD candidates came from different research institutes across the globe to present their own research proposals at the symposium. The symposium was run in a lively and interactive manner. The candidates received constructive feedback on their proposals from all the symposium participants. In this report we describe the presented proposals, focusing on the content and feedback. Through them we can take a peek at the trends and emerging areas of agile research in the coming years.
2018
Theme "At its heart, an agile approach has little to do with software; it's all about recognizing and applying feedback." These are the words of Andrew Hunt, one of 17 authors of the Agile manifesto, which in 2001 initiated revolutionary changes in the way new software is developed and delivered [1]. Yet, the large majority of empirical studies on the effective use of Agile principles and methods has exclusively focused on the IT industry. Little is known about the application of Agile in non-software innovation contexts [2], [3]. This is a significant missed opportunity from a theoretical and practical standpoint. Agile has brought major productivity gains and has consistently enhanced the time, cost and quality performance of software development projects [4]. It's a framework that helps innovators cope with the growing uncertainty and turbulence in technological and market environments [5]-[7]. Feedback and change are at the core of Agile for a dynamic, evolving, and organic, rather than static, predefined, and mechanistic development process[8]. To create timely, highquality, and cost efficient innovations, Agile developers organized in small, co-located, autonomous teams, build and test software in rapid iterative cycles, actively involving users to gather feedback, updating the project scope and plan "on-the-fly", using face-to-face communication as opposed to documentation [9]. Shortly after its introduction, Boehm and Turner [10] introduced the concept of Agile's home ground, referring to the project conditions that are most favorable for this framework: small, non-critical, in-house projects with changing requirements but stable architecture [11]. Recent studies however report a growing trend of applying Agile methods outside its narrow "sweetspot", to contexts that were the home turf of traditional, linear, plan-driven Stage-Gate/Watefall models [12], [13]. Mangalaraj et al. [14] suggest that developers increasingly perceive Agile as a viable approach across all innovation projects. Yet, this discussion is still mostly confined in the IT field. What about projects that create new products which include no software or for which software is only a part? What about non-IT industries? Answers to these questions are few, and mostly based on anecdotal evidence. More research-based insights are needed. Transferring Agile concepts is not trivial due to the different nature of purely digital vis-à-vis physical products. Modern products are typically complex systems with many interacting components belonging to several technical domains. Unlike software, hardware development is more difficult to break into small chunks and so to organize in rapid iterations; it requires crossfunctional teams that connect to departments that work very differently, are often geographically dispersed, and so harder to synchronize [15]. Tangible products have longer development cycles and cost more to prototype. The typical duration of Agile sprints is too fast for hardware developers to make meaningful progress and deliver a working prototype for user testing and the resultant collection of realistic feedback [3]. These and other attributes may indeed restrict and/or complicate the adoption of Agile methods outside software. Scholars have tentatively explored recipes to overcome these obstacles: the adaptation of specific Agile practices to non-IT environments, e.g., modifying the definition of "done sprints" or introducing the concept of "protocepts" (the hardware version of a "shippable product" required at the end of sprints), while maintaining Agile values and principles unchanged [15]; the coexistence of flexible and traditional frameworks in the same organization, and so the adoption of Agile-Stage-Gate hybrids [16]; the evolution of Agile principles to account for all types of innovation projects, outputs and industries. Most scholars believe that Agile will continue expanding its boundaries. Progress in prototyping and other technologies (e.g., 3D printing and virtual simulation) as well as in management thinking, through smarter ways to modularize and rapidly test complex systems
Agile challenges in practice : a thematic analysis Conference or Workshop Item
2018
As agile is maturing and becoming more widely adopted, it is important that researchers are aware of the challenges faced by practitioners and organisations. We undertook a thematic analysis of 193 agile challenges collected at a series of agile conferences and events during 2013 and 2014. Participants were mainly practitioners and business representatives along with some academics. The challenges were thematically analysed by separate authors, synthesised, and a list of seven themes and 27 sub-themes was agreed. Themes were Organisation, Sustainability, Culture, Teams, Scale, Value and Claims and Limitations. We compare our findings against previous attempts to identify and categorise agile challenges. While most themes have persisted we found a shift of focus towards sustainability, business engagement and transformation, as well as claims and limitations. We identify areas for further research and a need for innovative methods of conveying academic research to industry and indust...
The Agile Research Penultimatum
2009
Agile software development is a widely used and successful methodology for organizing and managing software product development in an industry setting. For academic research projects in Computer Science, the development of software is often a major component and the use of agile methods may be appropriate. The fundamental difference in how software engineering is performed in an academic research setting as compared with that of industry, however, means that a strict application of agile approaches may not be ideal. In this paper, we adapt the Agile Manifesto to the needs of an academic research project. Four case studies are presented, two from industry, one from academia, and one from an industry-academia collaborative project to support the adaptations, motivating a set of proposed agile research policies called the Agile Research Penultimatum.
Agile challenges in practice : a thematic analysis Conference Item
2016
As agile is maturing and becoming more widely adopted, it is important that researchers are aware of the challenges faced by practitioners and organisations. We undertook a thematic analysis of 193 agile challenges collected at a series of agile conferences and events during 2013 and 2014. Participants were mainly practitioners and business representatives along with some academics. The challenges were thematically analysed by separate authors, synthesised, and a list of seven themes and 27 sub-themes was agreed. Themes were Organisation, Sustainability, Culture, Teams, Scale, Value and Claims and Limitations. We compare our findings against previous attempts to identify and categorise agile challenges. While most themes have persisted we found a shift of focus towards sustainability, business engagement and transformation, as well as claims and limitations. We identify areas for further research and a need for innovative methods of conveying academic research to industry and indust...
AGILE:Boon for Today's Software Industry-A Review
IJSRP, 2013
Agile software development or agility is a sound concept of today's scenario which comprises the methods like scrum, Kanban, pair programming, extreme programming etc...Agile methods work with collaboration, competence, predictive planning and achievement and so that they let a project to be completed in its optimum state i.e. within time and cost and with producing best results. Agile methods are not bound to apply only in field of software development but they can be used in each and every field for getting best results in least efforts. This paper is an attempt to provide a study on agile methods as well as the chances to use them in other fields of engineering.
Agile in the large: Getting from Paradox to Paradigm
There is a gap in the research surrounding Agile software development. Whilst approaches to implementing Agile-in-the-small have an evidenced track record of success, approaches to implementing Agile in the large do not. This paper shows that whilst we understand many of the challenges of large scale Agile, we do not yet fully understand how these challenges should be addressed. This is a significant problem as increasingly; organisations embark on a program of broad organisational change, guided by emergent frameworks.
Agile Manifesto for Teaching and Learning
The Journal of Effective Teaching, 2017
A group of faculty members representing six colleges at a public university formed a learning community to study the Agile Way of Working-a method of workplace collaboration widely used in software development-and to determine whether the concepts, practices, and benefits of Agile are applicable to higher education settings. After more than two years of study, experimentation, and reflection , this group found that its adaptations of Agile to higher education produced positive outcomes by increasing student engagement, encouraging students to take responsibility for their learning, enhancing the level and quality of collaboration, and producing higher quality deliverables. In this paper we propose an Agile Manifesto for Teaching and Learning that can be used to direct the work of higher education faculty in the classroom and beyond. Second, we describe our diverse experiences incorporating Agile tools and techniques into the classroom. Third, we present the results of a student survey concerning their experiences. Finally, we discuss our journey for adopting the Agile Way of Teaching and Learning.
2015
As agile is maturing and becoming more widely adopted, it is important that researchers are aware of the challenges faced by practitioners and organisations. We undertook a thematic analysis of 193 agile challenges collected at a series of agile conferences and events during 2013 and 2014. Participants were mainly practitioners and business representatives along with some academics. The challenges were thematically analysed by separate authors, synthesised, and a list of seven themes and 27 sub-themes was agreed. Themes were Organisation, Sustainability, Culture, Teams, Scale, Value and Claims and Limitations. We compare our findings against previous attempts to identify and categorise agile challenges. While most themes have persisted we found a shift of focus towards sustainability, business engagement and transformation, as well as claims and limitations. We identify areas for further research and a need for innovative methods of conveying academic research to industry and indust...