Supporting Adaptable Methodologies to Meet Evolving Project Needs

While most agile methodologies assume that change is inevitable, current approaches have adopted the strategy of defining practices and activities that are general enough to be adapted to many project settings. These methodologies have the ability to address variance and adaptability within the processes, but are unable to adopt different methodologies to meet the evolving needs of projects as they progress through their lifecycles, or change to meet new business or user conditions. For example, a project may begin with a Scrumbased process, but require some XP processes or even heavyweight processes later in the lifecycle. Agile methodologies should be able to react to these changes with appropriate practices and processes that fit project needs at any point in time. In this paper, we describe a methodology generator, a tool that can create hybrid approaches to software development spanning from the most simple to the agile to the heavyweight, depending on project needs. A rule based system is combined with an experience-based feedback mechanism to define the conditions under which a given methodology, process, or activity is applicable to project needs. Deviations from the defined process are freely allowed, but the deviations are captured by the tool so it can be analyzed for process improvements that can help software development organizations become more adaptive to changes in business and technology conditions.