To Örebro University

Agile software development has become increasingly popular over the past years. Agile methods are perceived to address challenges caused by the rapid change in the market while reducing time to market and development. As the popularity of Agile method is growing, the need for Agile adoption guidance also increases. Over the past years, Agile Maturity Models (AMMs) have been proposed to offer guidelines in Agile adoption. Agile maturity models (AMMs) suggest that Agile practices are introduced in a specific order. However, a number of evaluations of AMMs show that they are not properly validated and not suited for use in industry. Current evaluations of AMMs are based on certain criteria and not based on empirical studies. There are no studies that evaluate AMMs' suggestion to introduce Agile in certain order against industry practice. The relevance of the AMMs in the industry is not yet examined.

In this study, we conducted a literature review to identify the order of Agile practice introduction mentioned in AMMs. We then compared the AMMs' suggestions to the strategies used by practitioners, which we elicited from a survey and a series of interviews.

The literature survey revealed 12 AMMs which provide explicit mappings of Agile practices to maturity levels. These mappings show that the AMMs are not in agreement pertaining to the which practice is to be included in which maturity levels. The AMMs do not provide clear information nor rationale why certain practices need to be introduced in a specific maturity level. Comparison of the AMMs suggestions and the empirical study revealed that the guidance suggested by AMMs are not aligned with industry practice. The AMMs take a simplistic view of introducing Agile practices in a pre-determined order without consideration of the different contexts in industry. Our study indicates that practitioners iteratively add, remove, and modify the set of Agile practices they use to match their needs and contexts. In addition, the AMMs do not consider the potential perceived trade-off of adding Agile practices, such as team member discomfort, conflicts with other teams, and recurring bugs.

Currently, AMMs do not provide sufficient information to guide Agile adoption in the industry. Associating Agile maturity with sets of Agile practices is inadequate and too simplified. Our results suggest that there might be no universal strategy for Agile adoption that works better than others.