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Agile Challenges in Practice: A Thematic Analysis

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Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming (XP 2015)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 212))

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Abstract

As agile is maturing and becoming more widely adopted, it is important that researchers are aware of the challenges faced by practitioners and organisations. We undertook a thematic analysis of 193 agile challenges collected at a series of agile conferences and events during 2013 and 2014. Participants were mainly practitioners and business representatives along with some academics. The challenges were thematically analysed by separate authors, synthesised, and a list of seven themes and 27 sub-themes was agreed. Themes were Organisation, Sustainability, Culture, Teams, Scale, Value and Claims and Limitations. We compare our findings against previous attempts to identify and categorise agile challenges. While most themes have persisted we found a shift of focus towards sustainability, business engagement and transformation, as well as claims and limitations. We identify areas for further research and a need for innovative methods of conveying academic research to industry and industrial problems to academia.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Central Lancashire, Preston, PR1 2HE, UK

    Peggy Gregory & Katie Taylor

  2. The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, UK

    Leonor Barroca, Dina Salah & Helen Sharp

Authors
  1. Peggy Gregory
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  2. Leonor Barroca
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  3. Katie Taylor
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  4. Dina Salah
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  5. Helen Sharp
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Peggy Gregory .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Aalto University, Espoo, Finland

    Casper Lassenius

  2. SINTEF, Trondheim, Norway

    Torgeir Dingsøyr

  3. Aalto University, Aalto, Finland

    Maria Paasivaara

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Gregory, P., Barroca, L., Taylor, K., Salah, D., Sharp, H. (2015). Agile Challenges in Practice: A Thematic Analysis. In: Lassenius, C., Dingsøyr, T., Paasivaara, M. (eds) Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming. XP 2015. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 212. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18612-2_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18612-2_6

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-18611-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-18612-2

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