Extending the dependency taxonomy of agile software development

Abstract

Systems and software development is a collaborative activity and agile software development epitomises collaboration by formalising how teams and their customers work together to develop a software product. Collaboration is achieved, in part, using mechanisms for coordinating interdependent work. Coordination is defined as the managing of dependencies and this study explores the nature of dependencies in software development projects. Firstly, this study extends an existing taxonomy of dependencies based on evidence from agile projects by showing that three agile and one non-agile project show the same pattern of dependencies. Secondly, this study finds that knowledge dependencies are the most frequently occurring dependencies in these small co-located software projects. The key contribution of this research is a better understanding of the dependencies in software development projects. Understanding dependencies can lead to more informed selection of coordination mechanisms, and ultimately more effective collaboration. © Springer-Verlag 2013.