A Simple Tool to Assist in Agile Methodology Adoption Decisions

This paper describes the development of a decision support tool, an adoption assessment matrix based on critical adoption factors, that addresses a need in industry; namely, to improve the overall understanding of the constituent parts of agile systems development methodologies. It highlights the importance of critical adoption factors to the adoption of an agile method and illustrates the usefulness of a decision support process to determine the viability of an agile method for a specific software project. The paper describes the results of a series of workshops (two carried out in commercial software developement companies, and one with personnel from the British Minsitry of Defence) where the adoption assessment matrix was used to assess the suitability of agile methods in software development projects. A major benefit of the tool is that it guides discussion, concentrating the debate on the critical factors, applied to the individual project. These discussions proved to be as valu...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2007
• Where: JDS
• Authors: John McAvoy, David Sammon, Ian Owens
• Keywords: Adoption Assessment Matrix, Agile Methods, Critical Adoption Factors, JDS 2007