Agility from First Principles: Reconstructing the Concept of Agility in Information Systems Development

Abstract

Awareness and use of agile methods has grown rapidly among the information systems development (ISD) community in recent years. Like most previous methods, the development and promotion of these methods have been almost entirely driven by practitioners and consultants, with little participation from the research community during the early stages of evolution. While these methods are now the focus of more and more research efforts, most studies are still based on XP, Scrum, and other industry-driven foundations, with little or no conceptual studies of ISD agility in existence. As a result, this study proposes that there are a number of significant conceptual shortcomings with agile methods and the associated literature in its current state, including a lack of clarity, theoretical glue, parsimony, limited applicability, and naivety regarding the evolution of the concept of agility in fields outside systems development. Furthermore, this has significant implications for practitioners, rendering agile method comparison and many other activities very difficult, especially in instances such as distributed development and large teams that are not conducive to many of the commercial agile methods. This study develops a definition and formative taxonomy of agility in an ISD context, based on a structured literature review of agility across a number of disciplines, including manufacturing and management where the concept originated, matured, and has been applied and tested thoroughly over time. The application of the texonomy in practice is then demonstrated through a series of thought trials conducted in a large multinational organization. The intention is that the definition and taxonomy can then be used as a starting point to study ISD method agility regardless of whether the method is XP or Scrum, agile or traditional, complete or fragmented, out-of-the-box or in-house, used as is or tailored to suit the project context.

The challenges that challenge: Engaging with agile practitioners’ concerns

“…In the references in Chuang et al [13] we found no papers on the topic of business value (searching on 'value'); eight discussing measurement ('metrics', 'measurement'); and none on claims or limitations ('misconception', 'shortcoming', 'fail', 'hype', 'lack', 'claim', 'limitation'). While there is some literature about the concept of agility [6,41], there is very little about misconceptions, hype and failure. Agile hype is discussed by Janes and Succi [42] who suggest agile has followed the Gartner Hype Cycle, and is stuck in the 'Trough of Disillusionment' as a result of what they call the 'guru phenomenon'.…”

‘Lots done, more to do’: the current state of agile systems development research

“…Stephens & Rosenberg, 2003). While this view has been contradicted by some, Conboy (2009) suggests that this may not be the case, pointing to the significant volume of research attempting to rebuild and tailor these methods so they can operate in other environments (e.g. Bowers et al, 2002;Crispin & House, 2003;Stotts et al, 2003;Cao et al, 2004;Kahkonen, 2004;Lindvall et al, 2004).…”

Coevolving Systems and the Organization of Agile Software Development

“…The ongoing debate on agile vs. plan-driven methods reflects a lack of understanding of agile concepts and how agile software development is conducted in practice, which can be attributed in part to the weak theoretical grounding of agile methods (Turk et al 2002, Conboy andFitzgerald 2004) and further conceptual problems such as lack of clarity and lack of "theoretical glue" (Conboy 2009). These issues raise the concern that agile methods may be "reduced to a series of steps executed by rote" (Highsmith 2000, p.14).…”