Evaluating AGILE adoption in software delivery organizations

Introduction

Software development methodologies play an important role in the organizations’ ability to respond to new stimuli originating from new requirements, features, vulnerabilities and bugs.  AGILE methodologies are widely used, based on the premise of fast reaction and minimal expenditure in responding to these stimuli.  Research in the field of AGILE is evaluated against (a) culture transformation (Gregory & Taylor, 2019), (b) projects, (c) frameworks (Dingsøyr et al., 2012; Diebold et al., 2018) or (d) specific IT functions. Table 1 demonstrates the extensive research undertaken in the evaluation of AGILE against specific IT functions. Software delivery organizations necessitate the use of the above functions in their overall software delivery success. 

IT functions in AGILE teams

The below list explains the role of each IT function within the software development organization.

• Development (D) – The actual development teams.
• IT Governance (G) – The overall IT function which ensures that all IT functions are aligned and co-ordinated toward the organization’s IT strategy.
• Architecture (A) – The IT function responsible to leverage standardization, reduce complexity and maximizing efficiency and quality. The architecture function works closely with Product Owner, Project manager and development leads.
• Operations (O) – The IT function responsible to facilitate, enable, deliver and maintain software artefacts, produced by development teams.  In today’s environments this is normally referred to as DEVOPS. Other IT functions can be included in this category including security (DEVSECOPS) and DATAOPS.

The IT Governance, Architecture and Operations functions are supporting agents to the development teams. Yet they are essential towards successful software delivery cycles. Based on the above, a logical model is presented in Figure 1 involving external (green) and internal (blue) agents affecting the success of agile software delivery. These agents are subject to unexpected and frequent changes (Dooley, 1997).

AGILE teams as Complex Adaptive Systems

The theoretical foundation enables the researcher to investigate the research problem.  The Complex Adaptive Systems theory is suitable for such investigation since it evaluates the AGILE teams within the broader ecosystem. Agile teams are complex due to their characteristics, whereby every person has relationships and interaction and behavior is unpredictable (Alaa & Fitzgerald, 2013).  Utilizing Ashby’s law of requisite variety, AGILE teams require internal capabilities to meet external requirements (Nerur & Balijepally, 2007). The study conducted by Jain and Meso (2004) demonstrate the lack of documentation produced by AGILE methodologies which can potentially compromise operations through refactoring, maintenance and support.   Another issue related to AGILE methodologies is related to fast resolution of issues (software fixing; due to velocity-constraints the teams do not engage in adequate problem solving engagement (Nerur & Balijepally, 2007) thereby falling apart from architecture and governance paradigms. Figure 2 depicts AGILE-driven IT functions working in harmony within a complex system.

Validated instruments to measure the success of AGILE transformation

The instrumentation methods proposed in table 2 may be utilized to collect the necessary information from the appropriate IT functions. Such data allows researchers to evaluate the adoption and effectiveness of AGILE teams within the ecosystem.

Conclusion

The above research allows organizations to evaluate the agile adoption amongst all the IT functions, whereby the entire ecosystems is assessed and tuned accordingly. Such reality checks allow organizations to continuously improve their process and workforce towards improved software delivery cycles.

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