Special Section on Agile or Time-Honored? A Look at Current Best Practices in IT Development

摘要

When the Agile Manifesto was originally created in February of 2001, it foreshadowed a new era of IT design, development and project implementation. In stark contrast to the time-honored, linear and sequential software development process of the waterfall method, the agile methodology emphasizes close collaboration between the programmer team and business experts, encourages face-to-face communication, and embraces the frequent delivery of new deployable business value. These aspects of agile development are typically delivered by tight, self-organizing teams using an iterative, team-based software development approach. Today, agile design, development and project implementation are increasingly common, yet often face challenges due to management support, project management gaps, and developer resistance. It is this context that motivated this special section. Specifically, we were interested in adding to the literature regarding how the agile methodology is genuinely used in practice; additionally, we were curious as to how the agile method is being received by developers and if it is being used holistically or if hybrid or fractional adaptations of the agile methods were employed.