Scaling Agile to Lean – Track Summary

Abstract

There are many books, journals and articles explaining agile and to a much lesser extent lean software development methods. Technical competences such as software architecture, automated testing and quality assurance are key focal areas of these materials on agile and lean methods. While some are prescriptive, there is often a substantial difference between the textbook ‘vanilla’ version of the method and the method actually enacted in practice. Prescribed practices are inevitably interpreted in diverse ways or tailored to suit the specific needs of teams. The constantly evolving technological environment that software development projects are enacted in also highlights the need to tailor prescribed agile practices to work in emerging deployment models, such as cloud computing and mobile computing. Quite a few empirical studies focus on how agile methods were adopted, tailored and used in realworld contexts (e.g., Rasmusson, 2003, Fitzgerald et al., 2006). However, there is a distinct absence of lean software development cases, and cases of agile deployment tend to be weak in terms of theoretical foundation, fail to build on previous lessons, and often lack consistency and coherence (Abrahamsson et al., 2009, Conboy, 2009). In the absence of sound, systematic research, there are few lessons learned across studies, and thus the existing body of knowledge is somewhat fragmented and inconclusive. A systematic and insightful understanding of agile adoption, tailoring and execution is yet to be achieved, and research on lean software development is yet to begin.