A Structured Framework for Assessing the "Goodness" of Agile Methods

Abstract

Agile Methods are designed for customization; they offer an organization or a team the flexibility to adopt a set of principles and practices based on their culture and values. While that flexibility is consistent with the agile philosophy, it can lead to the adoption of principles and practices that can be sub-optimal relative to the desired objectives. We question then, how can one determine if adopted practices are "in sync" with the identified principles, and to what extent those principles support organizational objectives? In this research, we focus on assessing the "goodness" of an agile method adopted by an organization based on (1) its adequacy, (2) the capability of the organization to provide the supporting environment to competently implement the method, and (3) its effectiveness. To guide our assessment, we propose the Objectives, Principles and Practices (OPP) framework. The design of the OPP framework revolves around the identification of the agile objectives, principles that support the achievement of those objectives, and practices that reflect the "spirit" of those principles. Well-defined linkages between the objectives and principles, and between the principles and practices are also established to support the assessment process. We traverse these linkages in a top-down fashion to assess adequacy and a bottom-up fashion to assess capability and effectiveness. This is a work-in-progress paper, outlining our proposed research, preliminary results and future directions.

An empirically-developed framework for Agile transition and adoption: A Grounded Theory approach

“…However, their framework, unlike Sidky et al's framework does not force companies to choose specific practices for each Agility level, but is it is subjected to forcing Agility to specific levels, which leads to less flexibility of the transition and so, it is not compatible with the Agile approach (Soundararajan and Arthur, 2011). That framework also does not explain the procedure of Agile adoption and does not consider the critical factors of the transition and its potential challenges.…”

“…Sidky et al (2007) proposed a stepwise adoption approach that was based on the maximum potential Agility of an organization that suggests some specific Agile practices for adaptation. This framework, as discussed in Section 3, is subjected to serious criticisms about its weaknesses including high complexity, huge amount of required overhead, inconsistency with the nature of Agile approach, the ignorance of considering business values, low flexibility in its application, forcing companies to choose specific practices, and so forth (Esfahani, 2012;Soundararajan and Arthur, 2011;Soundararajan et al, 2012). As mentioned earlier, the main reason for such problems is proposing a strict and highly disciplined framework.…”

“…Furthermore, applying such a comprehensive, complex, highly-disciplined, and detailed framework can lead to significant overhead and is completely inconsistent with the flexibility promised by Agile approach. One of the authors of the framework, four years later, criticized it and explained that forcing companies to consider the Agility levels and specific practices for each level compromises the flexibility offered by Agile methodologies (Soundararajan and Arthur, 2011). All the aforementioned consequences make it difficult to use in practice, especially in small and medium-sized companies.…”

“…Like previous models, applying this model in small and medium-sized organizations is not easy or A C C E P T E D M A N U S C R I P T 5 affordable. Furthermore, forcing companies to consider various Agility levels reduces flexibility and is inconsistent with the Agile approach (Soundararajan and Arthur, 2011). Sureshchandra and Shrinivasavadhani (2008) proposed a framework for Agile adoption in distributed development.…”

“…At the same time, there are several criticisms against the proposed frameworks which most of them are concerned mainly with their complexity or usability as well as the inconsistency of their nature with Agile approach (Esfahani, 2012;Soundararajan and Arthur, 2011;Soundararajan et al, 2012).The raised criticisms have been elaborated in Section 3. It should be noted that though Agile methods were introduced in the early 2000s, their increasing prevalence has been seen in recent years (VersionOne, 2014;West et al, 2010).…”