Agile Adoption Process Framework

The objective of this research is to provide organizations with a process that can guide projects in adopting more agile software development approaches. The result of this research is a process framework consisting of various components that work together to provide a roadmap and guide for organizations wishing to adopt agile practices during project development. Figure 1 illustrates the stages and sequence of events in this process framework. The objective of the First stage of the process framework is to identify any organizational factor that would prevent the adoption of agile practices. The stage starts with an introductory meeting with the key stakeholders of the Agile adoption endeavor. This meeting focuses on explaining the main concepts behind Agile methods and presents an overview of the stages that the adoption effort will go through. After this informational session the agile consultant examines the organization for the presence of any factors that might hinder the organization from proceeding with the adoption process. These factors are referred to as discontinuing factors. If no discontinuing factors are found the process framework enters into its Second stage. The objective of Stage 2 is to determine, from a project –level perspective, the extent to which agile practices can be adopted. The process framework considers each project that wants to adopt Agile practices and assesses the pertinent characteristics of that project that can influence the degree to which it can adopt agile practices. The highest level of agility a project can seek to adopt is referred to as the Project's Potential Agile Level (PPAL). The PPAL is a number from 1 to 5 corresponding to the 5 Agile Levels defined by this framework. Once the PPAL is identified, the process framework enters its final stage (Stage 3). The objective of Stage 3 is to assess the extent to which an organization possesses the characteristics that will support the adoption of each of the agile practices identified by the PPAL. The outcome of the organizational assessment is the identification of those characteristics needed for the successful adoption of each of the Agile practices and the extent to which those characteristics are present (or absent) in the organization. An analysis of the " gap " between the project–level and organizational agility assessments indicate the probability of a successful (or unsuccessful) adoption of the agile practices for the project under consideration. If the gap analysis shows a small distance between …