Becoming Agile: A Grounded Theory of Agile Transitions in Practice

Abstract

Agile adoption is typically understood as a oneoff organizational process involving a staged selection of agile development practices. This view of agility fails to explain the differences in the pace and effectiveness of individual teams transitioning to agile development. Based on a Grounded Theory study of 31 agile practitioners drawn from 18 teams across five countries, we present a grounded theory of becoming agile as a network of on-going transitions across five dimensions: software development practices, team practices, management approach, reflective practices, and culture. The unique position of a software team through this network, and their pace of progress along the five dimensions, explains why individual agile teams present distinct manifestations of agility and unique transition experiences. The theory expands the current understanding of agility as a holistic and complex network of on-going multidimensional transitions, and will help software teams, their managers, and organizations better navigate their individual agile journeys.

Exploring Workflow Mechanisms and Task Allocation Strategies in Agile Software Teams

“…Our study supports the different levels of autonomy evident on agile teams [11] as we found evidence of varying management approaches: manager-driven, managerassisted and team-driven. Additionally, we also identified a new level: individual-driven task allocation.…”

“…With the evolution of agile methods, software teams are meant to be self-organizing with high levels of autonomy, teams empowerment and mutual decision making in their everyday work [10,12] including project management activities such as task allocation [11,12]. In practice, however, agile teams are seen to display varying levels of autonomy as they gain experience of functioning in a self-organizing way [11].…”

Transformation towards agile software product line engineering in large companies: A literature review

“…Part of this training is to discuss impediments with the team and resolve resentments . The core of an agile transformation is to change the culture of the company . This change is strongly facilitated by a thorough training …”

Self-Assignment: Task Allocation Practice in Agile Software Development

“…In addition, the concepts of 'light touch' management and self-organizing teams are the essence of agile teams [1]. These benefits have taken many software firms by a storm, as a result adopting many of these practices in their everyday project management activities including task allocation [4,8]. This has affected the way the tasks allocation takes place in agile teams.…”

“…Self-directed task allocation or self-assignment is an attribute of agile teams [4,8]. In theory, every member of the agile team is meant to assign a task or user story to themself [4].…”