A Novel Technique to Assess Agile Systems for Stability

Robert Healy, Tapajit Dey, Kieran Conboy, Brian Fitzgerald

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

Agile systems, like the Kanban and Scrum frameworks, are built on assumptions of sustainability and stability, however, there is little empirical evidence on whether such systems are stable in practice or not. Therefore, in this study we aim to inspect the stability of Agile systems by leveraging the concept of stability described in Queueing Theory. We define a novel metric, the Stability Metric, as a way of assessing queueing systems, especially Agile systems. We inspect 926 Jira projects in 14 organizations with over 1.6 million product backlog items using this metric. The analysis showed that 72.89% of these Jira projects were not stable and stable systems, on average, had product backlog sizes 10 times shorter than unstable ones. These results suggest that while the goal of Agile is to create a sustainable, stable way of working, this is not guaranteed, and a better understanding of systems and queues may be required to help design, create, coach, and maintain optimal Agile systems.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationAgile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming - 24th International Conference on Agile Software Development, XP 2023, Proceedings
EditorsChristoph J. Stettina, Juan Garbajosa, Philippe Kruchten
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH
Pages20-33
Number of pages14
ISBN (Print)9783031339752
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2023
Event24th International Conference on Agile Software Development, XP 2023 - Amsterdam, Netherlands
Duration: 13 Jun 202316 Jun 2023

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Business Information Processing
Volume475 LNBIP
ISSN (Print)1865-1348
ISSN (Electronic)1865-1356

Conference

Conference24th International Conference on Agile Software Development, XP 2023
Country/TerritoryNetherlands
CityAmsterdam
Period13/06/2316/06/23

Keywords

  • Agile
  • Backlogs
  • Jira
  • Queueing Theory
  • Stability

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