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The competition in the software market demands that the time required for any software product to reach the market be reduced if the product is to survive competition from other developers. The pursuit of this goal has led to the adoption of agile software development methodologies. While other agile methodologies provide guidelines as to the software engineering (SE) practices to be used during the development lifecycle, Scrum does not. The purpose of this study is twofold: first, to identify the usage and level of importance of software engineering practices in the Scrum development environment; and second, to investigate how Scrum teams adopt an appropriate set of SE techniques and whether a hybrid Scrum/Extreme Programming (XP) methodology is an appropriate approach to take. This research was conducted by examining sample data from five organizations using the Scrum methodology. The sample included a range of industries including communications and embedded systems, financial asset management, software development houses and consulting firms in South Africa. The study employed a mixed method approach. A key finding was that, regardless of the fact that Scrum does not explicitly recommend engineering practices, there was extensive use of these practices by all of the participating organizations. The study also found that the lack of software engineering practices in Scrum does not constitute a barrier to a successful adoption of Scrum, provided the 'inspect and adapt' principle inherent in Scrum is properly followed. The study discusses the findings, explains the implications and suggests future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the foundations of adapting agile development methodologies in software development. It explores the growing popularity of Extreme Programming due to its focus on managing time to market constraints, however, the method needs to be adapted to suit the needs of different contexts. It examines the use of adaptive structuration theory to analyze data from multisite case study and describes several sources of structure that affects the appropriation of agile practices.

The article discusses the proposed Method for Method Configuration (MMC) in tailoring information systems development. It explores how the method has been used during the development of three software projects to manage method tailoring and to promote agile goals and values. It explores the content examples of the method configurations which determine the significance of MMC and its conceptual framework on eXtreme Programming.

The article examines an empirical study which focuses on the requirements engineering (RE) practices employed by agile software developers and the benefits and challenges posed by these practices. It discusses an analysis of data from 16 software development organizations which reveals seven agile RE methodologies. The study has two phases including the carrying of case studies in 10 organizations involved in high-speed software development and the taking of data from six organizations which used Extreme Programming and Scrum. The study analyzes the difference between agile RE and traditional RE and suggests that the intensive communication between the developers and customers is the most important RE practice.