Sources of satisfaction in agile software development

In this paper we address the topic of satisfaction by analysis of the results of a national survey of software development in Switzerland. We found that satisfaction is reported more by those using Agile development than with plan-driven processes. We explored how satisfaction relates to other elements in the development process, including the use of various practices, and the influences on business, team and software issues. We found that certain practices and influences have high correlations to satisfaction, and that collaborative processes are closely related to satisfaction, especially when combined with technical practices. Our intention in this analysis is principally descriptive, but we think the results are important to understand the challenges for everyone involved in Agile development, and can help in the transformation to Agile.