Coordination Effectiveness In An Agile Software Development Context

Effective coordination is an important factor in successful software projects that has not been fully explored in the context of agile software development. Agile software development projects eschew many traditional practices for achieving coordination leaving a gap in our understanding of exactly how such projects are coordinated and if this coordination is effective. However, before investigating coordination behaviours provided in agile software development, and how effective they are, it is necessary to have an understanding of the concept of „coordination effectiveness‟. This paper defines „coordination effectiveness‟ based on existing coordination research and case study interview data drawn from experts in the field of agile and non-agile software development. From this, a definition of coordination effectiveness is developed. Such a clearly defined concept should prove useful for future research when assessing coordination behaviours in agile software development projects and for those investigating other types of project and other classes of system development methodology.