Introducing an Agile Process in a Software Maintenance and Evolution Organization

TLDR

The study presents results of introducing an XP-based agile process into an evolutionary and maintenance software development environment. The agile process was implemented in a large organization and applied by a team over eight months. Introducing XP in its original form proved more difficult in this complex environment, requiring redesign of many practices to suit the team.

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to present results of introducing an agile process based on extreme programming, XP, in an evolutionary and maintenance software development environment. The agile process was introduced to a large software development organization. The process was applied by a team during eight months. The conclusions indicate that it in this case is more difficult to introduce XP, in its original appearance, to the case environment than to less complex environments. The complexity of the organization made it necessary to redesign many of the practices in order for them to fit the needs of the software development team.