TY - JOUR

T1 - Towards the statistical construction of hybrid development methods

AU - Tell, Paolo

AU - Klünder, Jil

AU - Küpper, Steffen

AU - Raffo, David

AU - MacDonell, Stephen

AU - Münch, Jürgen

AU - Pfahl, Dietmar

AU - Linssen, Oliver

AU - Kuhrmann, Marco

N1 - Funding Information: We thank all the study participants and the researchers involved in the HELENA project for their great effort in collecting data. was supported by the institutional research grant PRG887 of the Estonian Research Council as well as the Estonian IT Center of Excellence (EXCITE) TK148. Dietmar Pfahl

PY - 2021/1/18

Y1 - 2021/1/18

N2 - Hardly any software development process is used as prescribed by authors or standards. Regardless of company size or industry sector, a majority of project teams and companies use hybrid development methods (short: hybrid methods) that combine different development methods and practices. Even though such hybrid methods are highly individualized, a common understanding of how to systematically construct synergetic practices is missing. In this article, we make a first step towards a statistical construction procedure for hybrid methods. Grounded in 1467 data points from a large-scale practitioner survey, we study the question: What are hybrid methods made of and how can they be systematically constructed? Our findings show that only eight methods and few practices build the core of modern software development. Using an 85% agreement level in the participants' selections, we provide examples illustrating how hybrid methods can be characterized by the practices they are made of. Furthermore, using this characterization, we develop an initial construction procedure, which allows for defining a method frame and enriching it incrementally to devise a hybrid method using ranked sets of practice.

AB - Hardly any software development process is used as prescribed by authors or standards. Regardless of company size or industry sector, a majority of project teams and companies use hybrid development methods (short: hybrid methods) that combine different development methods and practices. Even though such hybrid methods are highly individualized, a common understanding of how to systematically construct synergetic practices is missing. In this article, we make a first step towards a statistical construction procedure for hybrid methods. Grounded in 1467 data points from a large-scale practitioner survey, we study the question: What are hybrid methods made of and how can they be systematically constructed? Our findings show that only eight methods and few practices build the core of modern software development. Using an 85% agreement level in the participants' selections, we provide examples illustrating how hybrid methods can be characterized by the practices they are made of. Furthermore, using this characterization, we develop an initial construction procedure, which allows for defining a method frame and enriching it incrementally to devise a hybrid method using ranked sets of practice.

KW - hybrid methods

KW - software development

KW - software process

KW - survey research

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85096761266&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1002/smr.2315

DO - 10.1002/smr.2315

M3 - Article

VL - 33

JO - Journal of Software: Evolution and Process

JF - Journal of Software: Evolution and Process

SN - 2047-7473

IS - 1

M1 - e2315

ER -