Setting the Scope for a New Agile Assessment Model: Results of an Empirical Study

Agile software development methods have been increasingly adopted by many organizations at different organizational levels. Whether named agile adoption, agile transition, agile transformation, digital transformation or new ways of working, the success of embracing this change process mostly remains uncertain. This is primarily because there are many ways of evaluating success. Based on the existing agile assessment models, we developed a model of principles with associated clusters that serves as a core for a new agile assessment model that is capable of assessing agile organizations at different scale. Towards our ultimate goal to establish a lightweight, context-sensitive agile maturity model, we validated our initial findings in an expert interview study to identify improvement points, and ensure the at hand model’s applicability, coherence and relevance. The results of the interview study show that the structure as well as the content of our assessment model fits with the experts’ expectations and experience.