A Structured Framework for Assessing the "Goodness" of Agile Methods

Abstract

Agile Methods are designed for customization, they offer an organization or a team the flexibility to adopt a set of principles and practices based on their culture and values. While that flexibility is consistent with the agile philosophy, it can lead to the adoption of principles and practices that can be sub-optimal relative to the desired objectives. We question then, how can one determine if adopted practices are "in sync" with the identified principles, and to what extent those principles support organizational objectives? In this research, we focus on assessing the "goodness" of an agile method adopted by an organization based on (1) its adequacy, (2) the capability of the organization to provide the supporting environment to successfully implement the method, and (3) the method's effectiveness. To guide our assessment, we propose the Objectives, Principles and Practices (OPP) framework. The design of the OPP framework revolves around the identification of the agile objectives, principles that support the achievement of those objectives, and practices that reflect the "spirit" of those principles. Well-defined linkages between the objectives and principles, and between the principles and practices are also established to support the assessment process. We assess the adequacy of an agile method by traversing the linkages in a top-down fashion. That is, given the set of objectives espoused by the agile method, we follow the linkages downward to ensure that the appropriate principles are enunciated, and that the proper practices are expressed. We assess the capability of an organization to implement its adopted method and the effectiveness of that implementation by using both a top-down and bottom-up traversal of the linkages. The bottom-up assessment, however, is predicated on the identification of people, process, project and product properties associated with each practice that attest to the presence and implementation of that practice. We refer to each practice, property pair as an indicator. By following the linkages upward from the indicators, we can infer the use of proper principles and the achievement of desired objectives.