adapting agility

people and project management issues rather than technical issues.4 Agile methods (see the related sidebar on page 22) are a recent set of development techniques that apply a human-centered approach to software production.5 The agile approach aims to deliver high-quality products faster, producing satisfied customers. We conducted an empirical study to investigate whether agile methods change and improve project management practices in software companies. We based the study on Henry Petroski’s approach, which says that the “analysis of causes of failures can do more to advance knowledge than all the successes in the world.”6 The underlying data sample comprises managers of software companies— 10 adopting agile methods and 10 using traditional (which, for simplicity, we call planbased) approaches. Structure of the investigation Our study focuses on how well project management deals with people (developers and customers) and the development process (planning and organization). We based the study’s overall structure on Victor Basili’s Goal/Question/Metric approach.7 GQM aims to systematically develop a goal-oriented measurement program. The measurement system has three levels: