Integrating agile software development and software process improvement: a longitudinal case study

Agile software development solutions are targeted at enhancing work at project level. Little is yet known about the relationship between agile projects and organizational capability improvement. The agile project teams are suggested to iteratively improve their behaviour in a validated manner. This paper addresses the high value of such validated software process improvement (SPI) knowledge emerging from project teams and its utilization at the organizational level SPI. In this paper it is suggested that the novel SPI methods of agile project teams also require alterations in the activities of the organizational level if in order to enable the mutually benefiting coexistence of the two. Empirical results from a longitudinal case study over five software development projects are presented to illustrate the evolvement of organizational SPI mechanisms and to derive implications for integrating the agile software development and organizational SPI. The study reveals the high importance of close collaboration between the organizational and project levels throughout the projects and identifies several organizational activities needed in enhancing SPI within agile projects and in an organization.