Context: Agile practices have created its own mark on recent software development strategies. The significance of agile core values and principles attracted several organizations towards agile software development. Agile methods incorporate core values & principles, whereas agile practices define how agile methods are implemented in practice. However, it is still unclear, which combinations of agile practices are adopted in practice and how are they adapted. Objectives: In this research, our main aim is to find the combinations of agile practices that are most commonly adopted in practice, which includes identifying the practices which mostly appear together and finding the evidences for adaptations of agile practices. Methods: We have developed a survey to collect empirical evidence regarding agile practice adoption and adaptation. The survey is based on a framework consisting of a set of questions to determine agile practice adoption and adaptation. The framework was validated with researchers and practitioners through interviews. In order to identify the practices and possible adaptations we conducted a literature review. The sample population of the survey includes primarily project managers, developers, agile coaches and system types includes majority of information systems, commercial type of software, outsourced and embedded. Results: We have collected 109 responses with the survey. It is important to make the tradeoff between the length of the survey and quality of the responses, so, we needed to pose many questions with regard to the ways how the practices are tailored/adapted. We found that there are certain practices which were given highest priority and mostly appear together, certain practices appears only with particular combinations of practices. Regarding practice adaptations, the empirical findings show the adaptations of each individual practice. Moreover, regarding employee and customer satisfaction, the results indicate that there is a significant level of satisfied employees and customers with agile software development. A conceptual model of agile practices and performance is developed and presented to make a better understanding of implications for practice. Conclusions: During adoption there are certain set of agile practices that were given higher importance, given highest priority during selection and also mostly appears together. Moreover, there are certain practices which are considered as most important, but are given with less priority during selection by practitioners. Furthermore, the empirical findings supports practice adaption depends on change in context factors. Finally, it is interesting to see that almost all of the stakeholders in agile software development are satisfied with its nature.

A adoção de metodologias ágeis tem se provado uma atividade sensível a cultura das organizações que as aplicam. Nos dez anos que se sucederam ao Agile Manifesto, projetos ágeis se desenvolveram a partir de tentativas conduzidas em situações ideais até grandes iniciativas adaptadas para as mais diversas condições. Por outro lado, a cultura organizacional tem se provado determinante na maneira que organizações abordam os desafios que se apresentam. Este trabalho tem por objetivo explorar a relação entre os pressupostos culturais básicos das organizações e práticas ágeis selecionadas. Para isso, se buscou identificar, através de revisão da literatura, pressupostos básicos significativos, práticas ágeis representativas e como se dá a interação entre esses, mapeando correlações através de uma survey. Essa se trata de um questionário respondido por funcionários da consultoria de TI ThoughtWorks a partir de sua experiência em projetos ágeis em clientes. A partir do resultado da survey foram exploradas as correlações identificadas – inclusive no que diz respeito à experiência e satisfação dos clientes com metodologias ágeis – e as observações foram validadas com consultores especialistas em métodos ágeis e em cultura organizacional. Procurou-se, assim, oferecer um mapa inicial para investigar a relação entre cultura organizacional e práticas ágeis que pode sugerir abordagens para introdução de práticas ágeis baseadas no perfil cultural da organização aonde se busca introduzi-las. / Companies adopting Agile methodologies have proven sensible to cultural differences. Ten years after the Agile Manifesto, agile projects have grown from small teams operating in specific situations to big cross-national initiatives. Organizational culture, in the other hand, is considered a determining factor in the way an organization perceives the world and interacts with it. In this paper, the relation between basic cultural assumptions of an organization will be matched up against a few selected agile practices. To achieve that, it looked into the literature to map these basic assumptions and representative agile practices, aiming to establish correlations between them through the results of a survey. This survey is a questionnaire answered by employees of the IT consultancy firm ThoughtWorks based on their experience in agile projects in client‟s organizations. Based on the survey results, some correlations were identified and analysed – including some regarding client experience and satisfaction with agile – and the observations were submitted to consultants, specialist in both agile practices and organizational culture for confirmation of the findings. It aimed to offer an initial map to investigate relations between organizational culture and agile practices looking to suggest new approaches for the introduction of agile practices based on the cultural profile of the target organization.

A adoção de metodologias ágeis tem se provado uma atividade sensível a cultura das organizações que as aplicam. Nos dez anos que se sucederam ao Agile Manifesto, projetos ágeis se desenvolveram a partir de tentativas conduzidas em situações ideais até grandes iniciativas adaptadas para as mais diversas condições. Por outro lado, a cultura organizacional tem se provado determinante na maneira que organizações abordam os desafios que se apresentam. Este trabalho tem por objetivo explorar a relação entre os pressupostos culturais básicos das organizações e práticas ágeis selecionadas. Para isso, se buscou identificar, através de revisão da literatura, pressupostos básicos significativos, práticas ágeis representativas e como se dá a interação entre esses, mapeando correlações através de uma survey. Essa se trata de um questionário respondido por funcionários da consultoria de TI ThoughtWorks a partir de sua experiência em projetos ágeis em clientes. A partir do resultado da survey foram exploradas as correlações identificadas – inclusive no que diz respeito à experiência e satisfação dos clientes com metodologias ágeis – e as observações foram validadas com consultores especialistas em métodos ágeis e em cultura organizacional. Procurou-se, assim, oferecer um mapa inicial para investigar a relação entre cultura organizacional e práticas ágeis que pode sugerir abordagens para introdução de práticas ágeis baseadas no perfil cultural da organização aonde se busca introduzi-las. / Companies adopting Agile methodologies have proven sensible to cultural differences. Ten years after the Agile Manifesto, agile projects have grown from small teams operating in specific situations to big cross-national initiatives. Organizational culture, in the other hand, is considered a determining factor in the way an organization perceives the world and interacts with it. In this paper, the relation between basic cultural assumptions of an organization will be matched up against a few selected agile practices. To achieve that, it looked into the literature to map these basic assumptions and representative agile practices, aiming to establish correlations between them through the results of a survey. This survey is a questionnaire answered by employees of the IT consultancy firm ThoughtWorks based on their experience in agile projects in client‟s organizations. Based on the survey results, some correlations were identified and analysed – including some regarding client experience and satisfaction with agile – and the observations were submitted to consultants, specialist in both agile practices and organizational culture for confirmation of the findings. It aimed to offer an initial map to investigate relations between organizational culture and agile practices looking to suggest new approaches for the introduction of agile practices based on the cultural profile of the target organization.

A adoção de metodologias ágeis tem se provado uma atividade sensível a cultura das organizações que as aplicam. Nos dez anos que se sucederam ao Agile Manifesto, projetos ágeis se desenvolveram a partir de tentativas conduzidas em situações ideais até grandes iniciativas adaptadas para as mais diversas condições. Por outro lado, a cultura organizacional tem se provado determinante na maneira que organizações abordam os desafios que se apresentam. Este trabalho tem por objetivo explorar a relação entre os pressupostos culturais básicos das organizações e práticas ágeis selecionadas. Para isso, se buscou identificar, através de revisão da literatura, pressupostos básicos significativos, práticas ágeis representativas e como se dá a interação entre esses, mapeando correlações através de uma survey. Essa se trata de um questionário respondido por funcionários da consultoria de TI ThoughtWorks a partir de sua experiência em projetos ágeis em clientes. A partir do resultado da survey foram exploradas as correlações identificadas – inclusive no que diz respeito à experiência e satisfação dos clientes com metodologias ágeis – e as observações foram validadas com consultores especialistas em métodos ágeis e em cultura organizacional. Procurou-se, assim, oferecer um mapa inicial para investigar a relação entre cultura organizacional e práticas ágeis que pode sugerir abordagens para introdução de práticas ágeis baseadas no perfil cultural da organização aonde se busca introduzi-las. / Companies adopting Agile methodologies have proven sensible to cultural differences. Ten years after the Agile Manifesto, agile projects have grown from small teams operating in specific situations to big cross-national initiatives. Organizational culture, in the other hand, is considered a determining factor in the way an organization perceives the world and interacts with it. In this paper, the relation between basic cultural assumptions of an organization will be matched up against a few selected agile practices. To achieve that, it looked into the literature to map these basic assumptions and representative agile practices, aiming to establish correlations between them through the results of a survey. This survey is a questionnaire answered by employees of the IT consultancy firm ThoughtWorks based on their experience in agile projects in client‟s organizations. Based on the survey results, some correlations were identified and analysed – including some regarding client experience and satisfaction with agile – and the observations were submitted to consultants, specialist in both agile practices and organizational culture for confirmation of the findings. It aimed to offer an initial map to investigate relations between organizational culture and agile practices looking to suggest new approaches for the introduction of agile practices based on the cultural profile of the target organization.

Agile software development has gained significant importance the recent years. Software practitioners have recognized the importance of agile development due to the benefits offered. Therefore, agile software development has been identified as the replacement to traditional or plan driven style of development. There are different frameworks or methods, which follow agile principles, known as agile methodologies. SCRUM and XP are the most popular and widely used agile methods or framework. There are different types of agile methodologies, each containing a set of practices, which can be adapted and implemented in an organization. However, there is still a need for empirical studies to understand the factors like requirements/modifications, challenges and mitigation strategies/techniques, which can enable successful implementation of agile practices in software organizations. In this study, the primary objective is to provide a comprehensive model or framework to practitioners, which includes the list of important requirements/modifications, challenges and mitigation strategies/techniques while implementing agile, and also pertaining to adoption/implementation of individual agile practices specific to SCRUM and XP. This model also includes the categorization of the requirements/modifications and challenges into different levels of an organization, to which they mostly apply. This conceptual model or framework can aid the practitioners in understanding and implementing agile practices in a better way in their organizations. In this study, an industrial survey is conducted in order to identify the list of important requirements/modifications that are needed to implement agile, challenges faced during implementation, and mitigation strategies/techniques needed to address the challenges. Also, categorization of the identified lists into different levels of the organization is also performed using survey. A systematic literature review is performed in order to identify the primary lists of requirements/modifications, challenges and mitigation strategies/techniques, which are further validated and classified using survey. Also, systematic literature review is used to identify the list of requirements/modifications, challenges and mitigation strategies/techniques that are needed while implementing individual agile practices specific to SCRUM and XP. Based on the systematic literature review, 53 primary studies were identified which are relevant to the research area. Upon analyzing the primary studies, the list of requirements/modifications, challenges and solutions are identified for generic agile adoption/implementation and also pertaining to individual practices specific to SCRUM and XP. Thereupon, an industrial survey is conducted where, identified list of requirements/modifications, challenges and mitigation strategies/techniques are provided to the respondents. Respondents were asked to classify the obtained aspects based on the level of importance. Also, they were asked to categorize the obtained requirements/modifications and challenges into different levels of an organization. The survey has obtained 48 responses from different parts of the world. From the results of survey, requirements/modifications, challenges and mitigation strategies/techniques are classified based on the level of importance. Also, requirements/modifications and challenges are categorized into different levels of an organization. Using the obtained factors, a conceptual model or framework was constructed for practitioners that can enable them to understand and implement agile practices in their organizations in a better way. To conclude this research, a comprehensive model or framework was constructed using the final list of important requirements/modifications, challenges and mitigation strategies/techniques while implementing/adopting agile and also pertaining to the individual agile practices, and also based on the categorization of the requirements and challenges into levels of an organization, where they are applicable. The final list of identified lists of requirements/modifications; challenges and mitigation strategies/techniques pertaining to individual agile practices can help practitioners to understand the implementation criteria of agile practices in software organizations. It was observed from the results of survey that perception of literature and practitioners are different in terms of usage of agile practices, as some practices, which were given high focus in the literature, were not given equal priority by the respondents. Empirical findings also help to identify change in policies and procedures and change to open workspace as most important requirements/modifications, organizational resistance and lack of motivated programmers as most critical challenges and proper training and inclusion of experts as most used mitigation strategies/techniques. Moreover, it was concluded that there is also a need for further full-scale empirical works on identifying the factors that affect adoption of agile. Practitioners can identify the benefits from this research and researchers can extend this work to remaining agile methodologies. / Agile systemutveckling har fått stor betydelse de senaste åren. Programvaru utövare har insett vikten av agila utvecklings grund av de förmåner som erbjuds. Därför har agile mjukvaruutveckling identifierats som ersättare till traditionella eller planen driven stil av utveckling. Det finns olika ramar eller metoder, som följer agila principer, så kallade agila metoder. SCRUM och XP är de mest populära och mest använda agila metoder eller ramverk. Det finns olika typer av agila metoder, var och en innehåller en uppsättning metoder, som kan anpassas och genomföras i en organisation. Det finns dock fortfarande ett behov av empiriska studier för att förstå de faktorer som krav / modifieringar, utmaningar och begränsningsstrategier / tekniker, som kan göra det möjligt för ett framgångsrikt genomförande av agila metoder i mjukvaruorganisationer.  I denna studie, är det primära målet att ge en heltäckande modell eller ramverk för utövare, vilket inkluderar en lista över viktiga krav / modifieringar, utmaningar och begränsningsstrategier / tekniker samtidigt genomföra vig, och även avseende antagande / genomförande av enskilda agila metoder specifika SCRUM och XP. Denna modell innehåller även kategoriseringen av de krav / modifieringar och utmaningar i olika nivåer i en organisation, till vilken de oftast gäller. Denna konceptuella modell eller ramverk kan hjälpa utövarna att förstå och genomföra agila metoder på ett bättre sätt i sina organisationer. I denna studie är en industriell undersökning för att identifiera listan över viktiga krav / ändringar som behövs för att genomföra vig, utmaningar under genomförandet, och begränsnings strategier / tekniker som behövs för att ta itu med utmaningarna. Också, kategorisering av de identifierade listorna i olika nivåer i organisationen är också utföras med undersökningen. En systematisk litteraturöversikt görs för att identifiera de primära listor krav / modifieringar, utmaningar och begränsningsstrategier / tekniker, som är validerade längre och klassificerade med hjälp enkät. Dessutom är systematisk litteraturöversikt används för att identifiera en lista över krav / modifieringar, utmaningar och begränsningsstrategier / tekniker som behövs samtidigt genomföra enskilda agila metoder som är specifika för SCRUM och XP. / +918500053444

Context: Adopting agile practices has proven to be successful for many practitioners both academically and practically in development scenario. But the context of agile practices adoption during software maintenance is partially studied and is mostly focused on benefits. The success factors of agile practices during development cannot be related to maintenance, as maintenance differs in many aspects from development. The context of this research is to study the adoption of different agile practices during software maintenance. Objectives: In this study, an attempt has been made to accomplish the following objectives: Firstly, to identify different agile practices that are adopted in practice during software maintenance. Secondly, identifying advantages and disadvantages of adopting those agile practices during software maintenance. Methods: To accomplish the objectives a case study is conducted at Capgemini, Mumbai, India. Data is collected by conducting two rounds of interviews among five different projects which have adopted agile practices during software maintenance. Close-ended questionnaire and open-ended questionnaires have been used respectively for first and second round interviews. The motivation for selecting different questionnaire is because each round aimed to accomplish different research objectives. Apart from interviews, direct observation of agile practices in each project is done to achieve data triangulation. Finally, a validation survey is conducted among second round interview participants and other practitioners from outside the case study to validate the data collected during second round interviews. Results: A simple literature review identified 30 agile practices adopted during software maintenance. On analyzing first round of interviews 22 practices are identified to be mostly adopted and used during software maintenance. The result of adopting those agile practices are categorized as advantages and disadvantages. In total 12 advantages and 8 disadvantages are identified and validated through second round interviews and validation survey respectively. Finally, a cause-effect relationship is drawn among the identified agile practices and consequences. Conclusions: Adopting agile practices has both positive and negative result. Adopting agile practices during perfective and adaptive type of maintenance has more advantages, but adopting agile practices during corrective type of maintenance may not have that many advantages as compared to other type of maintenance. Hence, one has to consider the type of maintenance work before adopting agile practices during software maintenance.

Agile software development approaches have emerged as a response to perceived frustrations of more heavyweight plan-driven methods, and have now become well established within the information systems field. More recently, there has been a tremendous growth in applying agile methods in globally distributed settings. In light of this, there is a pressing need to understand how agile practices are adapted which were originally conceived for collocated settings, and now actually being used in globally distributed settings, taking into account the challenges posed by such contexts. The aim of this thesis is to contribute to this research gap, with a quest to better understand and unpack the "black-box" of how collaborative practices evolve within global agile settings. The value of this research lies in improving and advancing our understanding of the challenges the team members go through in adapting agile practices in global contexts. The research also explores how collaborative practices can support agility in globally distributed settings. In order to contribute to knowledge and increase conceptual clarity, there is a need to carry out in-depth and in-situ research within an organisational context. By taking a socio-technical perspective this study intends to extend our existing knowledge on how collaborative practices are evolving in real-time practice within globally distributed agile settings. The empirical evidence is drawn from a globally distributed team, operating in a global financial bank with offices based in London and Delhi. Interpretive research methods including semi-structured interviews and observations are used to understand team members' experiences of developing collaborative practices in a globally distributed context. Although existing literature on agile software development acknowledges the intrinsic significance of collaboration for effective functioning of agile methods, current studies fail to demonstrate a situated practice perspective on how collaborative practices are adapted in globally distributed settings. This study enlists the analytical concepts of boundary objects and Pickering's "mangle of practice" to better understand the process of how collaborative practices evolve in globally distributed agile teams. The resulting analysis provides us with a much more nuanced understanding of how interactions take place in developing collaborative practices in globally distributed contexts. The findings reveal that collaborative practices within such settings tend not to follow from pre-set expectations of how agile practices should work, but are temporally emergent. Team members have to revise collaborative practices through an ongoing process of mutual "tuning" within their situated contexts, in order to achieve a gradual state of interactive stability or a steadiness of practices. The results demonstrate how actors address the challenges in developing shared understandings to drive forward the joint software development process across global locations and move towards supporting agility within the projects. The thesis presents a pluralistic conceptual framework called the Collaborative Tuning Approach, which aids in gaining critical insights of issues related to adapting agile practices and also demonstrates how collaborative practices can act as enabler to achieving agility in such settings. The framework explains the challenges the team members face and how these are overcome when attempting to modify practices and indeed how these evolve through an ongoing state of flux and uncertainty leading to hybrid agile practices.

In this thesis we investigate the usage of several agile software development methods as well as the usage of certain agile core practices. By conducting a web survey, we examine what makes these practices beneficial and what tends to make them rather less suitable for certain situations. Based on the results, we finally set up some recommendations for practitioners to reflect upon and improve their own software development process. Concerning these recommendations as well as the list of the investigated practices, we hope (and are almost sure) that there are some practices or ideas contained which are worth at least thinking about. The main findings of this thesis are: - Agile software development methods have already entered the professional market but they are still no cure-all. In many cases they also produce only middle-quality software. Nevertheless, there is – even if only little – evidence that at least XP projects meet the requirements of the customer better than traditional, non-agile methods. - For a successful software development project it is important that it has a suitable requirements engineering process, that the produced software is tested sufficiently (using automated regression testing among other types of testing), that there is a good communication between the customer and the developer side, that the risks of the project are considered, that the pros and cons of practices are considered and that processes are improved continuously. - Besides, it is important to consider the whole context when implementing a certain practice. For some contexts, certain practices do not fit for their purpose and this has to be realized. However, certain shortcomings of a specific practice might be reduced or even eliminated if implemented in combination with other practices.

Context: In the last decade, Agile software development methods were proposed as a response to plan-driven methods. The main aim for this paradigm shift was to cope up with constant changes. Core values that are central to agile methods are described in Agile Manifesto. Agile practices define how agile methods are implemented in practice. Objectives: This study aims to investigate what practices were considered and adopted as part of agile philosophy, and identify evidence on the use of agile practices in reference to what defines agile. Methods: We conducted a systematic literature review. The review includes 186 primary studies published between 2000 and 2010. Quality assessment based on rigor and relevance as identified in the selected papers has been conducted. Non-empirical papers were classified based on themes they addressed. Empirical papers were analyzed based on two factors: 1. if they described the use of agile practices for a software project/product in general, 2. if they described the use of agile practices for a specific purpose/activity Application type, team size and experience of subjects in the primary studies were extracted. The alignment between practices reported in the studies with the core agile values is analyzed. Results: A total of 119 studies were conducted in industry and 67 in academia. Nearly half the papers published by researchers are non-empirical and present analysis of agile practices in various topics. Over half of the empirical papers were focused on evaluation/assessment of a specific aspect of agile. ‘Pair programming’ received most attention in this direction. Among the empirical studies that described agile practices for academic projects, ‘Pair programming’ and ‘Test driven development’ were the most considered practices. Among the 119 studies conducted in industry, 93 studies described the use of agile practices for the overall project/product development while the remaining studies described experiences of single practices like Pair Programming or the modification/adoption of agile for non-software aspects in software projects. Practices adopted have been ranked based on team size, practitioners’ experience and application type. A method for agile assessment based on core agile values is developed and exemplified. Conclusions: Practices that are considered agile vary with context although ‘Pair programming’, ‘Continuous integration’, ‘Refactoring and Testing continuous throughout the project are the most common practices used. ‘Test driven development’ was not highly adopted by practitioners. But it was not clear if test cases were written before code construction in projects where continuous testing was performed. However, this was completely opposite in academic projects. Practices ‘On-site frequently modified. In many of the studies inspected, practices adopted were not aligned with agile values. Although practices related to technical aspects of software development are in place, agile practices that focus aspects like ‘working together’ and ‘motivated individuals’ are often not used in practice. Moreover, many of the studies were not reported to an extent that it was possible to draw any inferences on the usability/applicability, benefits and limitations of the agile practices. To this end, a major implication is to improve the quality of the studies and a need for a common framework to report the results of agile practices’ adoption.

Many organizations aspire to adopt agile processes to take advantage of the numerous benefits that it offers to an organization. Those benefits include, but are not limited to, quicker return on investment, better software quality, and higher customer satisfaction. To date however, there is no structured process (at least that is published in the public domain) that guides organizations in adopting agile practices. To address this situation, we present the Agile Adoption Framework and the innovative approach we have used to implement it. The framework consists of two components: an agile measurement index, and a 4-Stage process, that together guide and assist the agile adoption efforts of organizations. More specifically, the Sidky Agile Measurement Index (SAMI) encompasses five agile levels that are used to identify the agile potential of projects and organizations. The 4-Stage process, on the other hand, helps determine (a) whether or not organizations are ready for agile adoption, and (b) guided by their potential, what set of agile practices can and should be introduced. To help substantiate the "goodness" of the Agile Adoption Framework, we presented it to various members of the agile community, and elicited responses through questionnaires. The results of that substantiation effort are encouraging, and also suggest further avenues for improvement. / Ph. D.