An Empirical Analysis of the Effect of Agile Teams on Software Productivity

Abstract

Software productivity is a multidimensional concept that is categorized as an indication of project success. For software teams, productivity is a critical aspect that needs to be considered to ensure successful software development. Several factors can affect an agile software team’s during the software evolution process. However, the literature review shows that there is a lack of empirical evidence to identify these critical factors and its effect on productivity in agile software development in terms of agile teams. The aim of this work is to distinguish these factors and to specify how agile teams can have a productive impact on the software. To accomplish this, we reviewed the relevant literature and administrated an online survey, which was administrated to 52 agile software development companies in Pakistan. The most commonly identified factors are team member and leader role, inter-team relationship, handling requirements, team velocity, conformance quality and team vision, as well as a number of host of sub-factors. The researcher used statistical techniques, such as Spearman’s correlation, mean and standard deviation, to examine the results. The results showed that productivity correlates positively and significantly with most of the identified factors, except those with a negative correlation. The outcome revealed that these significant factors are critical factors to consider when examining team productivity in agile software development. The resulting quantitative analysis is expected to provide further insight into the dynamics of agile teamwork and establish a basis for further quantitative and qualitative modelling.