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The Agile and the Disciplined Software Approaches: Combinable or Just Compatible?

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Information Systems Development

Abstract

Offhand, the agile and the disciplined software development approaches seem contradicting. More and more, software development organizations however strive at implementing an agile software development approach while still being compliant to a quality assurance standard. Researchers are discussing the combinability and compatibility of these two approaches. Through a review of the literature, the purpose of this chapter is to determine whether the agile and the disciplined software development approaches are combinable or just compatible, in particular to identify the main challenges of using an agile software development approach in a disciplined setting. The review shows that the agile and the disciplined approaches are compatible, but not combinable. It is possible to implement agile practices and principles in a development process compliant with a quality standard, but the regulations of the standard makes it impossible to implement a full agile software development process without compromising the agility. The main challenges, when balancing the agility and discipline in a project, are how to determine the right level of documentation and how to overcome the differences in the way requirements are handled.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Aalborg University, Aalborg Ø, Denmark

    Lise Tordrup Heeager

Authors
  1. Lise Tordrup Heeager
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Correspondence to Lise Tordrup Heeager .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Heriot-Watt University Edinburgh Dept. Computer Science, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

    Rob Pooley

  2. Heriot-Watt University Edinburgh Dept. Computer Science, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

    Jennifer Coady

  3. City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR

    Christoph Schneider

  4. Monash University Fac. Information Technology, Clayton, Victoria, Australia

    Henry Linger

  5. National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland

    Chris Barry

  6. National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland

    Michael Lang

Appendices

Studies Included in the Review

Seehttp://heeager.com/files/combinability_or_compatibility_studies.pdf

Coding Schemes

Seehttp://heeager.com/files/combinability_or_compatibility_coding_schemes.pdf

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© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Heeager, L.T. (2013). The Agile and the Disciplined Software Approaches: Combinable or Just Compatible?. In: Pooley, R., Coady, J., Schneider, C., Linger, H., Barry, C., Lang, M. (eds) Information Systems Development. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-4951-5_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-4951-5_4

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-4950-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-4951-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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