A Comparative Review on the Agile Tenets in the IT Service Management and the Software Engineering Domains

Abstract

A rigor-oriented paradigm, in the Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) domain, has permeated in multiple international organizations. In contrast, in the Software Engineering (SwE) domain, the agile paradigm has complemented or replaced the rigor-oriented one in the last two decades. Recently shortened ITSM methods (i.e. FitSM and IT4IT) have emerged. However, due to their novelty, there is a scarce analysis of literature on their main assumed agile tenets. In this study, we identified and compared such tenets (i.e. aims, values, and principles) of the agile SwE and ITSM paradigms as well as the adherence to them from a representative literature on agile SwE and ITSM methods. Our results identified a high and low adherence respectively in the SwE and ITSM methods. Thus, a call for a robust theoretical foundation on agile tenets like those found in the SwE methods is required for the ITSM methods.