A framework for agile methodology practices: a family of methodologies approach.

Abstract

Abstract The challenges of selecting appropriate software development methodologies for a given project, and tailoring the methodologies to a specific human culture have been dealt with since the establishment of software development as a discipline. The general trend in software development methodologies since the early 1990s has been to change from plan–driven approaches to more iterative incremental development approaches. This change has led to the birth of a group of methodologies called “agile methodologies”, whose values and principles are becoming more and more prevalent in the software development industry. The practice in this industry has since 2004 shifted from an initial focus on the selection of specific agile methodologies to selecting the most appropriate practices from the agile family. Previous work on methodology selection has centered on either choosing between agile and plan–driven approaches or choosing specific methodologies from these two groups. This research aims at developing a framework for selecting the most appropriate set of agile practices for a given project instead of selecting a specific agile methodology. The results of this research contribute towards greater understanding of agile software development issues and should be useful to developer firms that want to adopt agile methodologies as a generic development culture without worrying about specific agile methodologies.