Agile Compass: A Tool for Identifying Maturity in Agile Software-Development Teams

Abstract

Researchers investigated how agile software development teams evolve. They analyzed nine teams' evolution of practices and found that the process was idiosyncratic. Each team adopted practices on the basis of its circumstances and improved the practices on the basis of the challenges it faced. Using this research, the researchers designed the Agile Compass, a questionnaire based on a set of guidelines for agile-development improvement, supported by real teams' values and principles. The article has three Web extras. The first shows the Agile Compass questionnaire (https://s3.amazonaws.com/ieeecs.cdn.csdl.public/mags/so/2015/06/extras/mso201506_AnAgile_s1.pdf), which can help development teams identify which outcomes they have accomplished. The second describes the Agile Compass research approach (https://s3.amazonaws.com/ieeecs.cdn.csdl.public/mags/so/2015/06/extras/mso201506_AnAgile_s2.png). The third is the Map of Evidence (https://s3.amazonaws.com/ieeecs.cdn.csdl.public/mags/so/2015/06/extras/mso201506_AnAgile_s3.png), showing the information supporting each type of project outcome that the authors gathered during interviews with development teams.