Paper Info
Title
Have Agile Techniques been the Silver Bullet for Software Development at Microsoft?
Abstract
Background. The pressure to release high-quality, valuable software products at an increasingly faster rate is forcing software development organizations to adapt their development practices. Agile techniques began emerging in the mid-1990s in response to this pressure and to increased volatility of customer requirements and technical change. Theoretically, agile techniques seem to be the silver bullet for responding to these pressures on the software industry. Aims. This paper tracks the changing attitudes to agile adoption and techniques, within Microsoft, in one of the largest longitudinal surveys of its kind (2006-2012). Method. We collected the opinions of 1,969 agile and non-agile practitioners in five surveys over a six-year period. Results. The survey results reveal that despite intense market pressure, the growth of agile adoption at Microsoft is slower than would be expected. Additionally, no individual agile practice exhibited strong growth trends. We also found that while development practices of teams may be similar, some perceive and declare themselves to be following an agile methodology while others do not. Both agile and non-agile practitioners agree on the relative benefits and problem areas of agile techniques. Conclusions. We found no clear trends in practice adoption. Non-agile practitioners are less enamored of the benefits and more strongly in agreement with the problem areas. The ability for agile practices to be used by large-scale teams generally concerned all respondents, which may limit its future adoption.
Year
DOI
Venue
2013
10.1109/ESEM.2013.21
Baltimore, MD
Keywords
Field
DocType
DP industry,software development management,software prototyping,team working,Microsoft,agile adoption,agile methodology,agile practice,agile techniques,changing attitudes,customer requirements,development practices,high-quality valuable software products,large-scale teams,market pressure,silver bullet,software development organizations,software industry,technical change,Agile,Agile development,Interviews,Survey
Customer requirements,Silver bullet,Systems engineering,Computer science,Software prototyping,Agile software development,Software,Technical change,Market research,Software development
Conference
ISSN
ISBN
Citations 
1938-6451
978-0-7695-5056-5
22
PageRank 
References 
Authors
1.51
5
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Murphy, B.1221.51
Christian Bird22469115.59
Thomas Zimmermann35947271.61
Laurie Williams44033473.64