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.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:bth-4292 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Manyam, Venkata Sarath Chandra, Kurapati, Narendra |
| Publisher | Blekinge Tekniska Högskola, Sektionen för datavetenskap och kommunikation, Blekinge Tekniska Högskola, Sektionen för datavetenskap och kommunikation |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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