Toward a conceptual framework of agile methods: a study of agility in different disciplines

By Kieran Conboy, Brian Fitzgerald. Workshop on Interdisciplinary Software Engineering Research, 2004

342 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Since the software crisis of the 1960's, numerous methodologies have been developed to impose a disciplined process upon software development. It is now widely accepted that these methodologies are unsuccessful and unpopular due to their increasingly bureaucratic nature. Many researchers and practitioners are calling for these heavyweight methodologies to be replaced by agile methods. The Agile Manifesto was put forward in 2001, and several method instantiations, such as XP, SCRUM and Crystal exist. Each adheres to some principles of the Agile Manifesto and disregards others. This paper proposes that these Agile Manifesto principles are insufficiently grounded in theory, and are largely naive to the concept of agility outside the field of software development. This paper aims to develop a comprehensive framework of software development agility, through a thorough review of agility across many disciplines. We then elaborate and evaluate the framework in a software development context, through a review of software related research over the last 30 years.

Subfields: Information Systems, Management of Technology and Innovation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/abb5969eaf738537cb27f2e9960baaa35c4dc2ec

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In Information Systems

In Management of Technology and Innovation

Citations in the corpus

Toward Agile: An Integrated Analysis of Quantitative and Qualitative Field Data (2010, background): “…extensiveness in terms of embracing various changes (Henderson-Sellers and Serour 2005; Qumer and HendersonSellers 2008) and response efficiency in terms of doing so with high speed and low cost (Conboy and Fitzgerald 2004; Erickson et al. 2005; Larman 2004; Qumer and HendersonSellers 2008).”
HRM in turbulent times: how to achieve organizational agility? (2012, background): “However, ‘agility requires waste to be eliminated, but only to the extent where its ability to respond to change is not hindered’ (Conboy and Fitzgerald 2004, p. 39).”
Agile Business Model Innovation in Digital Entrepreneurship: Lean Startup Approaches (2020, neutral): “Agility hence encompasses the features of flexibility, velocity, learning and response to change and leanness (Conboy and Fitzgerald, 2004; Campanelli and Parreiras, 2015).”
Empirical studies of agile software development: A systematic review (2008, background): “Conboy and Fitzgerald [19], for example, describe agility as what is known in other fields as “flexibility” and “leanness”.”