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contributed articles doi: 10.1145/ 1743546.1743580

by sergio de cesare, mark Lycett, robert d. macredie, chaitaLi PateL, and ray PauL

examining Perceptions of agility in software development Practice
OrganizatiOns undertaking sOftware develOpment

are often reminded that successful practice depends on a number of non-technical issues that are managerial, cultural and organizational in nature.4,8 These issues cover aspects from appropriate corporate structure, through software process development and standardization to effective collaborative practice. Since the articulation of the ‘software crisis’ in the late-1960s, significant effort has been put into addressing problems related to the cost, time and quality of software development via the application of systematic processes and management practices for software engineering. Early efforts resulted in prescriptive structured methods, which have evolved and expanded over time to embrace consortia/ company-led initiatives such as the Unified Modeling

Language and the Unified Process alongside formal process improvement frameworks such as the International Standards Organization’s 9000 series, the Capability Maturity Model and SPICE. More recently, the philosophy behind traditional plan-based initiatives has been questioned by the agile movement, which seeks to emphasize the human and craft aspects of software development over and above the engineering aspects.1,2 Agile practice is strongly collaborative in its outlook, favoring individuals and interactions over processes and tools, working software over comprehensive documentation, customer collaboration over contract negotiation, and responding to change over following a plan (see Sidebar 1). Early experience reports on the use of agile practice suggest some success in dealing with the problems of the software crisis,12 and suggest that plan-based and agile practice are not mutually exclusive.10 Indeed, flexibility may arise from this unlikely marriage

References: 1. Beck, K., et al, Manifesto for Agile Software Development. 2001. 2. Cockburn, A. Agile Software Development. The Agile Software Development Series, ed. A. Cockburn and J. Highsmith. Addison Wesley, 2002. 3. Dutta, S., Lee, M., and Wassenhove, L.V. Software Engineering in Europe: A Study of Best Practices 16, 3, (1999), 82-90. 4. Fafchamps, D. Organisational factors and reuse. IEEE Software 11, 5, (1994), 31-41. 5. Fitzgerald, B. The use of software development methodologies in practice: A field study. Information Systems Journal, 7, 3, (1997), 201-212. 6. Glass, R. Through a glass, darkly. Methodologies: Bend to fit? The Software Practitioner, Data Base Advances 27, 1, (1996), 14 - 16. 7. Glass, R.L. In search of meaning (A tale of two words). IEEE Software 19, 4, (2002), 134 -136. 8. Griss, M.L. and Wosser, M. Making reuse work at Hewlett-Packard. IEEE Software 12, 1, (1995), 105107. 9. Hardy, C.J., Thompson, J.B., and Edwards, H.M. The use, limitations and customization of structured systems developement methods in the United Kingdom. Information and Software Technology 37, 3, (1995), 467-477. 10. Lycett, M., et al. Resolving the tensions of agility in standardized practice. IEEE Computer 36,6, (June 2003), 79-85. 11. Patel, C., Lycett, M., Macredie, R.D., and de Cesare, S. Perceptions of agility and collaboration in software development practice. In Proceedings of the 39th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (Kauai, Hawaii, January 4-7). IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, CA, 2006. 12. Reifer, D.J., How good are agile methods? IEEE Software 19, 4, (2002), 16 - 18. Sergio de Cesare ([e-mail]) is a Lecturer in Information Systems and Computing at Brunel University, London, U.K. Mark Lycett ([e-mail]) is a professor of Information Systems Development at Brunel University, London, U.K. Robert Macredie ([e-mail]) is a professor of Interactive Systems at Brunel University, London, U.K. Chaitali Patel ([e-mail]) is a project manager and process improvement consultant at Agilisys Ltd. in London, U.K. Ray Paul ([e-mail]) is Emeritus Professor at Brunel University and Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science, London, U.K. © 2010 ACM 0001-0782/10/0600 $10.00 Ju n e 2 0 1 0 | vo l. 53 | n o. 6 | c om m u n ic at ion s of t h e acm 130 Copyright of Communications of the ACM is the property of Association for Computing Machinery and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder 's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.