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A Disciplined Approach to Adopting Agile Practices: The Agile Adoption Framework
Ahmed Sidky, James Arthur, Shawn Bohner
TL;DR
Organizations lack a structured public process for adopting agile practices. The paper introduces the Agile Adoption Framework, combining an agile measurement index with a four-stage process to assess agile potential and readiness and guide practice selection. The authors present it as an initial contribution toward answering how organizations can adopt agile practices, while acknowledging significant room for improvement.
Problem
No structured public-domain approach guides organizations through agile adoption and its readiness, practice-selection, difficulty, and preparation issues.
Method
The framework combines an agile measurement index with a four-stage process that assesses project potential, organizational readiness, and appropriate agile practices.
Results
The framework provides coaches with a realistic set of agile practices for each project and outlines organizational areas needing improvement before adoption begins.
Takeaways & Limitations
The framework supports go/no-go decisions and accommodates both project uniqueness and the surrounding organization’s readiness.
Takeaways & Limitations
The authors characterize the framework as an initial contribution with significant room for improvement.
Abstract
from arXiv · showhide
Many organizations aspire to adopt agile processes to take advantage of the numerous benefits that it offers to an organization. Those benefits include, but are not limited to, quicker return on investment, better software quality, and higher customer satisfaction. To date however, there is no structured process (at least in the public domain) that guides organizations in adopting agile practices. To address this problem we present the Agile Adoption Framework. The framework consists of two components: an agile measurement index, and a 4-Stage process, that together guide and assist the agile adoption efforts of organizations. More specifically, the agile measurement index is used to identify the agile potential of projects and organizations. The 4-Stage process, on the other hand, helps determine (a) whether or not organizations are ready for agile adoption, and (b) guided by their potential, what set of agile practices can and should be introduced.
1. Introduction and Motivation
The paper addresses the lack of a structured public approach for guiding agile adoption by introducing a structured, repeatable framework. Its measurement index and four-stage process assess potential and readiness, then guide practice selection.
- Motivation: Organizations lack a structured public approach for determining how to adopt agile practices and preparing for adoption.The paper identifies readiness, practice selection, adoption difficulties, and organizational preparation as issues such an approach must address.
- Contribution: The Agile Adoption Framework provides a structured and repeatable approach for guiding and assisting agile adoption efforts.The paper notes that applying the framework also requires an agile coach, either a consultant or trained employee.
- Contribution: The framework combines an agile measurement index with a four-stage process for determining which practices, and to what extent, can be introduced.Figure 1 presents the framework’s components and their relationships.
- Method: The measurement index identifies the agile potential of projects or organizations, while the process uses it to guide practices that fit their environment.The index is a scale used by the coach within the process component.
- 4-Stage Process: The first three stages identify discontinuing factors, assess a project’s target agility level, and assess organizational readiness for that target.Stage 1 addresses showstoppers; Stages 2 and 3 use the measurement index for project and organizational assessment.
- 4-Stage Process: Stage 4 reconciles the project’s target agile level with the organization’s readiness to determine the final practices to adopt.The process therefore connects project-level assessment with organizational readiness.
2. Agile Measurement Index
The agile measurement index addresses how much agility projects and organizations can adopt under their surrounding circumstances. It uses a scale composed of agile levels, principles, practices, and indicators.
- Purpose: Agile potential is the degree to which a project or organization can adopt agile practices, and it is influenced by surrounding circumstances.The framework uses this concept to assess how agile an entity can become.
- Purpose: The agile measurement index is a scale used by an assessor to determine the agile potential of projects and organizations.The framework names this assessment scale the agile measurement index.
- Components: The index comprises four components: agile levels, agile principles, agile practices, and indicators.These components organize the scale used to determine agile potential.
3. Agile Practices and Concepts
The framework operationalizes agility through five levels populated by practices and organized according to agile principles. Indicators assess organizational readiness to adopt those practices, while the index can be tailored into alternative instances.
- Agile Levels: The five agility levels enumerate possible degrees of agility, with a project or organization’s potential expressed as its highest attainable level.Attaining a level signifies adoption of the essential elements needed for that degree of agile effectiveness.
- Agile Levels: The five levels progress from Collaborative and Evolutionary through Effective and Adaptive to Ambient.They represent core Agile Manifesto qualities rather than qualities of a particular agile method.
- Agile Principles: Agile levels contain practices organized according to agile principles, which guide the selection of practices assigned to each level.The levels are therefore structured around both qualities of agility and the principles that refine them.
- Agile Principles: The five principles include embracing change for customer value, frequent delivery, human centricity, technical excellence, and customer collaboration.These principles summarize the essence of the Agile Manifesto and guide refinement of the five levels.
- Agile Practices: Agile practices are concrete activities and techniques, and attaining a level requires adopting its associated practices.Examples include paired programming, user stories, and collaborative planning.
- Agile Practices: The index contains 40 distinct agile practices arranged across the five levels and principles.The practices were selected after surveying agile methods used in industry.
- Indicators: Indicators are questions that measure organizational readiness for each practice or concept, using influences from GQM and the OPA Framework.For coding standards, indicators assess developers’ understanding of benefits and willingness to conform.
- Indicators: The five levels contain approximately 300 indicators for the 40 practices, and the presented index is one possible instance that can be tailored.Alternative instances may incorporate business values or reorganize practices based on experiential success.
3. The 4-Stage Process for Agile Adoption
The 4-Stage assessment process is the backbone of the framework: it first makes a go/no-go decision, then identifies practices suited to the project and organization. It uses staged assessments to reconcile project agility potential with organizational readiness.
- Process objectives: The process first determines whether an organization is ready to proceed with agile adoption and then identifies which practices it should adopt.Stage 1 supports the go/no-go decision; Stages 2–4 identify practices to adopt.
- Stage 1: Discontinuing Factors: Stage 1 identifies discontinuing factors that could prevent successful adoption, including inappropriate need, insufficient funds, and absent executive support.Organizations demonstrating any such factor should suspend adoption until the environment is more supportive.
- Stage 1: Discontinuing Factors: Over 20 organizational indicators assess whether discontinuing factors are present, including funding allocation, spending flexibility, and activity restrictions.The assessor uses one or more indicators to evaluate each organizational characteristic.
- Stages 2–3: Assessments: Stage 2 determines a project's target agile level, while constraining factors can limit the highest level it can achieve.Near team proximity, for example, constrains adoption of frequent face-to-face communication when it is outside the project's control.
- Stages 2–3: Assessments: Stage 3 evaluates whether organizational characteristics support the project's target level, using factors such as management style, buy-in, transparency, and power distance.Its results highlight characteristics that may cause problems in adopting a practice.
- Stage 4: Reconciliation: Stage 4 reconciles project potential with organizational readiness to identify adoptable practices and guide improvements needed for the project to reach its full potential.The approach also prepares the organization before introducing agile practices.
4. Quantitative Feedback about the Agile Adoption Framework
Feedback from 28 agile-community members assessed the 5 Levels of Agility and the 4-Stage process separately. Participants generally viewed the levels as comprehensive, practical, and necessary, while process agreement increased with experience and direct involvement.
- Study design: Feedback from 28 agile-community members was collected through 90-minute visits, presentations, discussions, and surveys.The feedback was analyzed by participant role and years of experience, with separate questionnaires for the 5 Levels and 4-Stage process.
- 5 Levels of Agility: Participants generally agreed that the 5 Levels of Agility were comprehensive, practical, and necessary.Some variability concerned the relevance and placement of practices within levels.
- 5 Levels of Agility: Feedback on practice placement varied by participant experience, role, and project background, supporting flexibility to tailor the levels to experience and business goals.Agile coaches and consultants provided more positive feedback in general than participants in other positions.
- 4-Stage Process: Agreement with the 4-Stage process increased with years of experience and direct involvement in agile adoption.Highly experienced participants strongly agreed that the process was clear and easy to understand.
- 4-Stage Process: Completeness received the lowest agreement among the evaluated 4-Stage process aspects.The authors attributed this partly to the 90-minute timeframe, which may have been too short to grasp the framework's relationships.
5. Conclusion
The Agile Adoption Framework is presented as a structured, repeatable, and method-independent approach for guiding organizations toward agility. Its assessments support project-specific adoption planning, while industry feedback was encouraging despite acknowledged room for improvement.
- The framework provides a structured and repeatable approach for guiding organizations toward agility.
- The framework is independent of any particular agile method, including XP and Scrum.
- Two assessment levels accommodate project uniqueness while recognizing the organization’s readiness to adopt requisite agile practices.
- The 4-Stage process uses the 5 Levels of Agility to identify organizational areas needing improvement before adoption begins.
- Industry feedback on the framework was encouraging, although the authors acknowledge significant room for improvement.