Agile Software Development Methods: A Comparative Review1

Although agile software development methods have caught the attention of software engineers and researchers worldwide, scientific research still remains quite scarce. The aim of this study is to order and make sense of the different agile approaches that have been proposed. This comparative review is performed from the standpoint of using the following features as the analytical perspectives: project management support, life-cycle coverage, type of practical guidance, adaptability in actual use, type of research objectives and existence of empirical evidence. The results show that agile software development methods cover, without offering any rationale, different phases of the software development life-cycle and that most of these methods fail to provide adequate project management support. Moreover, quite a few methods continue to offer little concrete guidance on how to use their solutions or how to adapt them in different development situations. Empirical evidence after ten years of application remains quite limited. Based on the results, new directions on agile methods are outlined.