Agile adoption on organizations is frequently failing all over the world. We want to help companies on this process by looking at companies that have been through this transition - their characteristics, they steps they took and other perspectives. By a systematic review on published studies, we intend to answer the question: is it possible to find guidelines that can be reusable by other organizations on their Agile adoption process?

1. Agile Methods
Adoption on
Software Development
A Pilot Review
@caiocestari
@alfredogoldman
IPT & IME-USP

2. The Organizational Agile
Adoption Problem
what we want
what we get
Deliver Value Early
Replan Frequently
Improve Quality
Engage People
Stimulate Innovation
Daily Meetings
Plannings and Reviews
Product Backlogs
Dysfunctional Roles

3. The Organizational Agile
Adoption Problem
what we want
what we get

4. Why all those failures?
8th Annual State of Agile Survey -
VersionOne

5. Some Benefits
Need
Organizational
Shifts
James Shore and Diana Larsen’s Agile Fluency Model

6. Organizational Agile Adoption is
a Complex Problem
David Snowden’s Cynefin Framework

7. Research Question
Is it possible to relate characteristics of
organizations to the steps they take to
adopt agile methods?
(size, year of adoption, software as an
end or non-end activity, country…)

8. Evidence on Agile Adoption
Empirical Adoption Generic Adoption

9. Secondary Research
Questions
• What are the main steps taken by
organizations that adopted agile methods
empirically?
• What are the existing generic ways to guide
an organizational agile adoption?
• Is it possible to relate steps from empiric agile
adoptions in organizations to any of the existing
generic ways?

10. Systematic Review Protocol
(Kitchenham et al.)
Electronic and
Manual
Search (4062)
Duplicated
(732)
Accepted
(3330)
Title Filter
(3127)
Accepted
(203)
Abstract and
Conclusion
Filter (108)
Accepted
(95)
 1) Define Research Question
2) Define
Search Strategy
3) Define
Acceptance Criteria 4) Extract Data 
5) Analyze Data 

11. Electronic and Manual
Search

12. Rejected Studies
Rejection Category # of Studies
Not related to Agile Adoption 3126
Teams or Projects Adoption 38
Other Perspectives of
Adoption (PO, TDD, DSD)
24
Pre-Adoption or Post-Adoption 19
Other Reasons 27

13. Accepted Studies
Acceptance Category # of Studies
Experience Report 63
Framework 17
Study Case 3
Survey 3
Generic Analysis 6
Uncertain 5

14. Brief Qualitative Analysis
(To check contribution to the research questions)
+ Agile Adoption Framework (AAF)
+ Agile Adoption Motivation Framework (AAMF)

15. Organizational
Similarities
• Motivated by scientific management and waterfall
• Pilot-project or pilot-team
• Scrum

16. Existing Generic Ways
Acceptance Category # of Studies
Experience Report 63
Framework 17
Study Case 3
Survey 3
Generic Analysis 6
Uncertain 5

17. Empirical/Generic Relation
• AAF and AAMF consider organizational factors
as a restriction to Agile adoption at the
team/project level
• AAF proposes an organizational go/no-go
phase when are evaluated:
• the real need of the Agile transition
• available budget
• executive support

18. Primary Conclusions and
Next Steps
• There is a solid contribution to the secondary
research questions (with less than 10%)
• There’s great potential to answer the main
research question positively
Next planned steps are: studies full assessment,
data extraction and qualitative/quantitative analysis

19. Thank you! 
@caiocestari
@alfredogoldman
your feedback
is totally welcome!