The Impact of an Agile Methodology on the Well Being of Development Teams

Authors: Syed-Abdullah, Sharifah; Holcombe, Mike; Gheorge, Marian

Source: Empirical Software Engineering, Volume 11, Number 1, March 2006 , pp. 143-167(25)

Publisher: Springer

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Abstract:

This paper describes an empirical study, which addresses the aspect of well being amongst members of the software development teams. The question of interest is whether an agile methodology has any distinct effect on the well being of the software developers. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were utilised, including the participative observation, focus group interviews, close-ended questionnaires and simple statistical tests such as Spearman Correlation and Mann–Whitney test. Initial results showed that an agile methodology (XP) has a positive effect on the level of enthusiasm of the software developers in the most dynamic project. To understand why XP can increase enthusiasm, results are interpreted with references to cognitive, affective and managerial properties of the practices studied. This result needs further investigation on the individual effects of each practice on the wellbeing and attitudes of Software Engineering (SE) teams.

Keywords: Extreme programming; Agile methodology; Work related well being; SE teams; Anxiety; Contentment; Depression; Enthusiasm

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10664-006-5968-5

Affiliations: 1: Email: s.abdullah@dcs.shef.ac.uk

Publication date: 2006-03-01