Agile Principles and Ethical Conduct

Abstract

Software practitioners experience pressure to compromise their work and their reasonable care for others. Even as software becomes more beneficial, pervasive, and interconnected, the potential for unintended harm grows. Agile Software Development is an approach to building software systems that embodies a set of declared core principles. How do these principles align to an ethical standard of conduct? This paper attempts from an Agile Practitioner's perspective to compare and contrast Agile Principles with other approaches to Software Ethics. It identifies areas of strong resonance and gaps that exist between the stated Agile Principles and an explicit software code of ethical conduct.