Paper short abstract:

There is a correspondence between the agile approach of organising and managing projects of software development and the agile methods and tools of structuring and supporting the production of software. We argue that this correspondence is rooted in characteristics of software as a product.

Paper long abstract:

The agile framework (e.g. Scrum) proposes a new way of organizing and managing projects. In the field of software development, a whole range of specialized tools for agile development enables this new organizational approach. For example, the continuous integration server is a software tool that serves the purpose of integrating new software parts into the already programmed ones. It does so continuously and during the ongoing work of developing the software. This is crucial for developing with the Scrum method as this organization framework specifies that software has to be developed in iterations lasting only a few weeks, and that each iteration has to end with a piece of runnable software. Continuous integration draws on a particular characteristic of software: Software can be compiled into runnable products earlier or later in its development with less or more functionality. And if one wants to, further components can be added later. The same would be much more difficult with most hardware products.

In our presentation, we will show that there is a correspondence between the agile approach of organising and managing projects of software development and the agile methods and tools of structuring and supporting the production of software. We argue that this correspondence is rooted in the just mentioned characteristic of software as a product. Our findings are based on empirical research on projects of distributed software development from our research project "Collaborative Technologies and Practices in Transnational Projects of Software-Development" funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).