Do as you want or do as you are told? Control vs. Autonomy in agile software development

Abstract

Agile Software Development (ASD) projects still draw the attention of the research community. Agile methodologies promise to increase an ASD team’s agility in such a way, that these teams are able to respond and react to changing user requirements. Existing studies on flexibility and autonomy in ASD projects, however, imply that these projects potentially can benefit from different elements of control. Our objective is to improve the understanding of how to enact control through agile practices, and how these practices affect either formal or informal control in ASD teams. Based on an extensive literature review, our study (1) provides an overview of adequate control-enacting agile practices and (2) compares the results with our empirical findings, derived from qualitative data.