Investigating the applicability of Agility assessment surveys: A case study

Context: Agile software development has become popular in the past decade despite that it is not a particularly well-defined concept. The general principles in the Agile Manifesto can be instantiated in many different ways, and hence the perception of Agility may differ quite a lot. This has resulted in several conceptual frameworks being presented in the research literature to evaluate the level of Agility. However, the evidence of actual use in practice of these frameworks is limited. Objective: The objective in this paper is to identify online surveys that can be used to evaluate the level of Agility in practice, and to evaluate the surveys in an industrial setting. Method: Surveys for evaluating Agility were identified by systematically searching the web. Based on an exploration of the surveys found, two surveys were identified as most promising for our objective. The two surveys selected were evaluated in a case study with three Agile teams in a software consultancy company. The case study included a self-assessment of the Agility level by using the two surveys, interviews with the Scrum master and a team representative, interviews with the customers of the teams and a focus group meeting for each team. Results: The perception of team Agility was judged by each of the teams and their respective customer, and the outcome was compared with the results from the two surveys. Agility profiles were created based on the surveys. Conclusions: It is concluded that different surveys may very well judge Agility differently, which support the viewpoint that it is not a well-defined concept. The researchers and practitioners agreed that one of the surveys, at least in this specific case, provided a better and more holistic assessment of the Agility of the teams in the case study.