Investigating the Implementation of Metrics in Large-Scale Agile Development 

Abstract

With the great acceptance in the field of software development over the last two decades, agility and agile methodologies became a dominant mode of software development nowadays with Scrum being the de facto standard worldwide. Due to the great success of these methods in the industry, many organizations are interested in incorporating and applying agile development practices to larger projects. To measure the progress and performance evaluation within the organizations, agile literature proposes the use of metrics. Measuring progress in the domain of software, however, is hard and the use of metrics as well as their benefits and implications have to be studied in context. Based on a case study involving practitioners from 22 organizations, this study aims to investigate the implementation of metrics in large-scale agile development environment and identify the reasons for using metrics in the industry. Furthermore, it provides an overview of the challenges accompanying the use of metrics in such an environment as well as their advantages and disadvantages.

Objectives

This study aims to examine the implementation and use of metrics in a large-scale agile environment in the industry. The objective is to determine the motivation behind the use of metrics in a scaled agile environment and furthermore to identify and present possible challenges accompanying the use of metrics among practitioners as well as their advantages and disadvantages.

Research Questions

Research Question 1: What reasons have been reported in for using metrics in large-scale agile development?

Research Question 2: What challenges have been reported for large-scale agile development?

Research Question 3: What advantages and disadvantages have been reported for large-scale agile development?

Research method

Literature

[1] Robert K. Yin and Martin Höst. 2009. Case Study Research: Design and Methods (Applied Social Research Methods). Empirical software engineering(2009)

[2] Runeson and Höst (2009): Guidelines for conducting and reporting case study research in software engineering