A study of XP & Scrum: A Project Management Perspective

Abstract

This research examines agile software development from a project manager's perspective. It specifically investigates four different areas namely: project planning and scheduling; team selection; communication; and documentation on projects that use either Extreme Programming(XP) or Scrum as their software development methodology. Three organisations in Ireland participated in this study and one project manager from each organisation was interviewed. The size of the organisations, the level of experience of the project managers and the agile methodology in use varied across the organisation. The findings show that all project managers tended to be sceptical before implementing agile methodologies. However, post implementation they found that agile methodologies helped to improve their software development processes; provided the customer with a greater opportunity to work with the project team and also improved communication and collaboration amongst the project team. These elements contribute to a project team completing a more successful software development project.