Title
Examining perceptions of agility in software development practice
Abstract
Introduction 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. 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. 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, and suggest that plan-based and agile practice are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, flexibility may arise from this unlikely marriage in an aim to strike a balance between the rigor of traditional plan-based approaches and the need for adaptation of those to suit particular development situations. With this in mind, this article surveys the current practice in software engineering alongside perceptions of senior development managers in relation to agile practice in order to understand the principles of agility that may be practiced implicitly and their effects on plan-based approach.
Year
DOI
Venue
2010
10.1145/1743546.1743580
Commun. ACM
Keywords
Field
DocType
current practice,software process development,examining perception,software development,successful practice,management practice,agile practice,effective collaborative practice,software development practice,software engineering,software crisis,introduction organizations undertaking software,management,software process,unified modeling language,unified process,capability maturity model,internal standard
Software Engineering Process Group,Personal software process,Computer science,Lean software development,Knowledge management,Agile software development,Software development process,Empirical process (process control model),Software development,Social software engineering
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
53
6
0001-0782
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
13
0.63
8
Authors
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Sergio de Cesare121530.04
Mark Lycett230534.06
Robert D. Macredie388459.67
Chaitali Patel4643.53
Ray Paul548453.17