The agile professional culture: A source of agile quality

Ever since agile software development was introduced in the millennium shift, it has become a controversial software engineering topic with practitioners and researchers arguing about the benefits of it. The opinions have been widely divergent, on one side the supporters of the plan-driven predictable Software Process Improvement (SPI) embracing repeatable processes and continuous improvements, and on the other the agile development putting individuals and interactions over process and tools, working software over comprehensive documentation, customer collaboration over contract negotiation and change response over comprehensive plans. In this article, the agile methodology is examined from the human and cultural points of view. The concept of culture is analysed for deeper understanding of human and cultural dynamics influencing the agile professional culture. Parallels are drawn to success factors identified in recognised management approaches, such as the Effective Technical and Human Implementation of Computer Systems (ETHICS) and Total Quality Management (TQM). The type of organisation, suitable to embrace the agile professional development culture, is identified by examining the success factors observed. The democratic type of organisation in the C.HI.D.DI. (Clan-HIerarchical-Democratic-DIsciplined) typology is proposed to be the most suitable to create and sustain added business value and competitive advantage for agile software development. Copyright  2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.