An iterative improvement process for agile software development

Agile software development of short iterative cycles offers an opportunity for rapid, visible and motivating software process improvement (SPI). The agile principles suggest the regular reflections of agile project teams for improving the efficiency and adaptation of the process. However, current literature provides little support or empirical evidence for conducting such improvement efficiently, systematically and in a validated manner. Thus, this article proposes an Iterative Improvement Process for conducting SPI within individual agile project teams, which aims at increasing the ability of software developers to improve the development process based on their experiences and context knowledge. The approach has been trialed within a multiple case study of five consecutive case projects where both qualitative and quantitative research data has been systematically collected. The empirical data confirms the positive effects of the Iterative Improvement Process on the software development projects and reveals the willingness of software developers to participate in the Iterative Improvement activities due to the rapid and visible changes in their working practices. Copyright  2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.