The Adoption and Evolution of Agile Practices.

Traditional software product development models are characterised by a predictive approach derived from physical engineering processes. Recent developments in the software scenario have proved these plan-driven models to be inadequate, especially in high risk and rapidly changing environments. Agile methodologies were therefore developed as an answer to these issues. Due to their intrinsic agility, they have confirmed they are capable of adapting to the further changes that have occurred since they were first introduced: methodologies have been altered and tailored to address all the shortcomings found during their introduction. The aim of this research is to detect the dominant agile practices and adoption strategies, which transcend the original ones belonging to a certain model and may be affected by internal and external characteristics. A survey-based analysis was conducted in order to find out which practices are the most used. 194 valid questionnaires were returned. Factor and cluster analyses made it possible to relate the practices to several environmental characteristics with the purpose of seeking a significant relationship between them. The results of the study showed that most companies prefer to adopt practices related to the general management of the development process, to the detriment of practices associated with coding and testing techniques. Team members' opinions turned out to be the only internal factor responsible for the introduction or abandonment of the practices. As for the external variables, the size of the team and the proximity of the team members were proven to significantly affect the adoption strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]