Contribution of Agile Software Development Methods to Business-IT Alignment in Non-profit Organizations

Abstract

INTRODUCTION Regularly articles about the importance of alignment between business and are published. For example, according to the results of the 16th strategic Information Management / Trends in IT by Derksen and Luftman (2011), the topic is still a big concern for managers. Where 'IT and business alignment was the 3th most important concern in 2010, in 2011 it is the number one concern for management in the Netherlands (see Table 1). management 2011-NL 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 concerns Business 2 1 1 7 4 Productivity & cost reduct. Business agility 7 2 3 13 17 7 5 and speed to market and business 1 3 2 1 2 1 1 1 alignment reliability and 3 4 6 efficiency Business Process 6 5 4 18 15 11 5 10 Man./reengineering strategic 8 6 7 3 8 4 4 4 planning Revenue generating 16 6 8 innovations cost reduction 5 8 5 7 4 Security and 4 9 9 8 6 3 2 3 privacy Globalization 20 10 15 Knowledge 9 management Change management 10 management 2003 concerns Business Productivity & cost reduct. Business agility 7 and speed to market and business 1 alignment reliability and efficiency Business Process 10 Man./reengineering strategic planning Revenue generating innovations cost reduction Security and 3 privacy Globalization Knowledge management Change management Table 1: Top 10 Management Concerns NL Versus Global (Derksen & Luftman, 2011). Articles and papers often focus on the importance of business-IT alignment and describe the use of frameworks to measure the business-IT alignment maturity (e.g. the BIA Maturity model, Luftman and Kempaiah (2007)). However, the actions to accomplish a better alignment are often harder and more complicated to define. software is a group of software methods based on iterative and incremental in small multifunctional teams. Agile software development was coined by the Manifesto. (Beck et al., 2001) The main characteristics are: * Individuals and interactions over processes and tools * Working software over comprehensive documentation * Customer collaboration over contract negotiation * Responding to change over following a plan software claims to be more responsive to changing business needs than traditional software methods (Beck et al., 2001). Through means of early, systematic and continuous involvement of business members in the software team a high degree of involvement of the business is guaranteed. A few well known agile software methods are: * Extreme programming * Dynamic software method (DSDM) * Crystal methodologies * Scrum Dyba and Dingsoyr (2008) reviewed all empirical studies on agile software methods up to 2005. They concluded that there was not yet any substantial empirical evidence on the effectiveness, strength and limitations of agile software developments. They recommend much more empirical investigations should be conducted, especially on the popular agile method Scrum. In line with these recommendations some empirical data will be provided in this paper on the effects of the agile software Scrum. Our aim is to provide insight into improvement of business-IT alignment maturity by using the agile software method Scrum within non-profit organizations. Scrum is chosen because it is one of the most used and researched upon (Dyba & Dingsoyr, 2008) agile software methods. …