Abstract
For years, agile methods are considered the most promising route toward successful software development, and a considerable number of published studies the (successful) use of agile methods and reports on the benefits companies have from adopting agile methods. Yet, since the world is not black or white, the question for what happened to the traditional models arises. Are traditional models replaced by agile methods? How is the transformation toward Agile managed, and, moreover, where did it start? With this paper we close a gap in literature by studying the general process use over time to investigate how traditional and agile methods are used. Is there coexistence or do agile methods accelerate the traditional processes’ extinction? The findings of our literature study comprise two major results: First, studies and reliable numbers on the general process model use are rare, i.e., we lack quantitative data on the actual process use and, thus, we often lack the ability to ground process-related research in practically relevant issues. Second, despite the assumed dominance of agile methods, our results clearly show that companies enact context-specific hybrid solutions in which traditional and agile development approaches are used in combination.
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- 1.
A similar study is available by the “Status Quo Agile 2014” study [17]. However, this study does not provide as comprehensive historical data as the VersionOne survey series.
- 2.
We conducted several test runs finding this simple string producing the best results. Including/adding keywords like “process” just inflated the result set, yet no extra publication providing quantitative data on process use could be found in these tests.
- 3.
Due to space limitations, the study data set including the full list of mentioned processes is available for download here: http://goo.gl/bUB3Tr.
- 4.
Although [27] supports this assumption, this study was excluded from the quantitative analysis, as the authors rejected papers not explicitly dealing with agile methods, and summarized all non-agile approaches under “custom or other”. We thus have insufficient information about what processes are eventually meant and how those could affect our study results.
- 5.
This need is also supported by the just recently published GULP study (https://goo.gl/RciNpy) in which authors come to the conclusion that projects will be increasingly operated following a hybrid approach in future (population: 114 IT experts, mainly freelancers and project management consultants; study region: Germany).
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This research was partially carried out and supported by a Software Campus project (BMBF 01IS12053) funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research.
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Theocharis, G., Kuhrmann, M., Münch, J., Diebold, P. (2015). Is Water-Scrum-Fall Reality? On the Use of Agile and Traditional Development Practices. In: Abrahamsson, P., Corral, L., Oivo, M., Russo, B. (eds) Product-Focused Software Process Improvement. PROFES 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9459. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26844-6_11
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