Facilitators for Software Development Agility

Authors

Shekhar Rathor, Florida International UniversityFollow

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Major/Program

Management Information Systems

First Advisor's Name

Dinesh Batra

First Advisor's Committee Title

Committee chair

Second Advisor's Name

Weidong Xia

Second Advisor's Committee Title

committee member

Third Advisor's Name

Monica Chiarini Tremblay

Third Advisor's Committee Title

committee member

Fourth Advisor's Name

Mido Chang

Fourth Advisor's Committee Title

committee member

Keywords

Agility, Agile Software development

Date of Defense

9-26-2016

Abstract

Software development methodologies provide guidelines and practices for developing information systems. They have evolved over time from traditional plan-driven methodologies to incremental and iterative software development methodologies. The Agile Manifesto was released in 2001, which provides values and principles for agile software development. Over the last few years, agile software development has become popular because its values and principles focus on addressing the needs of contemporary software development. IT and Business teams need agility to deal with changes that can emerge during software development due to changing business needs. Agile software development practices claim to provide the ability to deal with such changes. Various research studies have identified many factors/variables that are important for agile software development such as team autonomy, communication, and organizational culture. Most of these empirical studies on agile software development focus on just a few variables. The relationships among the variables is still not understood. The dimensions of agility and the relationship between agility and other variables have not been studied quantitatively in the literature. Also, there is no comprehensive framework to explain agile software development. This research study addresses these research gaps.

This study analyzed a comprehensive research model that included antecedent variables (team autonomy, team competence), process variables (collaborative decision making, iterative development, communication), delivery capability, agility, and project outcomes (change satisfaction, customer satisfaction). It presents key dimensions of agility and quantitatively analyzes the relationship between agility and other variables. The PLS analysis of one hundred and sixty survey responses show that process variables mediate the relationship between antecedent variables and delivery capability and agility. The findings show that the delivery capability of the teams contributes to agility, antecedents and process variables contribute to agility, and delivery capability for better customer satisfaction. These results will help IS practitioners to understand the variables that are necessary to achieve agility for better project outcomes. Also, these quantitative findings provide better conceptual clarity about the relationship between various key variables related to agile software development.

Identifier

FIDC001175

Recommended Citation

Rathor, Shekhar, "Facilitators for Software Development Agility" (2016). FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 3059.
https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/3059