Empirical Studies to Identify Coordination- and Methodology Patterns in Large-Scale Agile Development

Abstract

Agile software development methodologies have been designed for use in small teams. The objective of agile methods is to increase the flexibility of the development teams, to adapt to changing requirements by closely working together with the customer, and to produce products that actually satisfy the user in the end. During the past years, due to the shown benefits of agile methodologies, larger companies have been increasingly interested in applying them in their software development projects as well.
Using agile methodologies in large-scale agile software development projects with multiple teams, however, creates additional challenges for companies, because those methodologies have not been designed with multiple teams and locations in mind. Challenges such as not working co-located, increased need for communication, and dependencies between the different teams are not addressed by standard agile methodologies. New good practices are required to apply agile methods successfully at scale.

So far, this area of challenges and new practices for large-scale agile software development is not broadly covered in research. Therefore, the Chair of Software Engineering for Business Information Systems (sebis) at the Technical University of Munich has developed a Large-Scale Agile Development Pattern Language. This pattern language will contain concerns of various stakeholders and patterns that address those concerns.
This thesis will contribute to filling this pattern language with concerns and pattern candidates observed in practice, by conducting an empirical study at a large German software vendor. The thesis looks at various stakeholders of the large-scale agile development program and seeks to identify their recurring concerns in coordination and application of agile methods at large scale. Further, good practices that are employed by the stakeholders to overcome their concerns are collected and documented in a formalized way, according to the pattern language.
All the collected concerns and good practices, together with the likes being collected at other projects, will result in a collection of patterns that is designed to help practitioners to successfully apply agile methodologies at large-scale projects.

Research Questions

1. What are recurring coordination and methodology challenges in large-scale agile development?
2. What are good practices for addressing recurring coordination and methodology challenges in large-scale agile development?

3. Which anti-patterns regarding coordination and methodologies should be avoided in large-scale agile development?

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