How Agile Are You Thinking? – An Exploratory Case Study

Agile software development methods reduce project costs and development time by simultaneously enhancing quality. But despite these advantages, agile principles are rarely adopted by the whole organization. In order to gain a deeper understanding of this issue, we conducted an initial exploratory qualitative case study in one medium-sized company. The goal of this study was to find out whether this company is thinking agile or traditional. Although we discovered a tendency towards an agile way of thinking, we identified several factors where the way of thinking remained traditional among management as well as employees. Our study reveals that cost-related aspects, a lack of self-responsibility, uncertainty with customer interaction and the urge for comprehensive documentation are obstacles to adopting agile methods beyond the development team. Hence, the results of our study provide useful implications for research and practice by identifying critical problem domains when implementing agile methods at the organizational level