Abstract
This study assesses the Shodan survey as an instrument for measuring an individual's or a team's adherence to the extreme programming (XP) methodology. Specifically, we hypothesize that the adherence to the XP methodology is not a uni-dimensional construct as presented by the Shodan survey but a multidimensional one reflecting dimensions that are theoretically grounded in the XP literature. Using data from software engineers in the University of Sheffield's Software Engineering Observatory, two different models were thus tested and compared using confirmatory factor analysis: a uni-dimensional model and a four-dimensional model. We also present an exploratory analysis of how these four dimensions affect students' grades. The results indicate that the four-dimensional model fits the data better than the uni-dimensional one. Nevertheless, the analysis also uncovered flaws with the Shodan survey in terms of the reliability of the different dimensions. The exploratory analysis revealed that some of the XP dimensions had linear or curvilinear relationship with grades. Through validating the four-dimensional model of the Shodan survey this study highlights how psychometric techniques can be used to develop software engineering metrics of fidelity to agile or other software engineering methods.
Highlights
When undertaking studies of software engineering methods it is important to assess the fidelity to which the teams follow the method
It is possible that weighting and aggregating the results of the survey questions in this way creates an invalid measure or underutilizes important information. Given it may well be, that a theoretically driven four-dimensional model could more accurately measure adherence to XP, we present a test of this using psychometric methods
Confirmatory factor analysis The uni-dimensional and four-dimensional models were tested through a confirmatory factor analysis approach using the Mplus v4.21 package
Summary
When undertaking studies of software engineering methods it is important to assess the fidelity to which the teams follow the method. To aid our understanding of how teams adopt particular methods and whether the level of adoption affects the outcomes of the team we need to develop instruments for quantifying fidelity to software engineering methodologies Such instruments would allow (a) organizations to be able to assess their own teams, and (b) researchers in empirical software engineering to measure and statistically control adoption of the methodology in consistent and comparative ways. Without these instruments we are unable to make hard conclusions about the relative merits of a method; poor performing teams could be those that did not follow it comprehensively, and the best performing teams could be the ones that constructively adapt the methodology to meet the circumstances or discard elements of it that they find do not work. In terms of quantitative studies, two papers used metrics to assess seven of the XP practices (Abrahamsson 2003; Abrahamsson and Koskela 2004)
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