The articles which specified benefits also describe challenges with Agile. These articles will be reviewed in the same order, starting with the Microsoft Research study (Begel and Nagappan, 2007).
The Microsoft study highlighted difficulties that practitioners had found. The top six difficulties involved in using Agile are:
Agile does not scale to large projects
Scrums take too long and are viewed as ways for managers to micromanage Management not buying into Agile
Teams unfamiliar with Agile and there was insufficient training Co-ordination with other teams is difficult
Losing sight of the big picture.
The Microsoft researchers found that some teams had failed to make agile work, with lack of management buy-in being the primary issue. Also there is a view that there is no “one true way to practise Agile Software Development”.
The survey by de Cesare (de Cesare et al, 2010) does not specifically questions users about the problems they have found with using Agile, however clear findings have been described indicating that projects fail when:
Project teams are not motivated.
Teams do not have the support from management.
Change control is locked in a traditional project management loop.
Project progress is still managed in terms of milestones and features and not working software.
From Ani Asnawi’s PhD thesis (Asnawi, 2012) a number of challenges with Agile developments have been identified:
Support from senior management is critical for the success of Agile. If team members are not willing to learn new practises, this is a significant
challenge to the use of Agile.
Lack of documentation was not seen as a significant benefit and in some cases for example Government contracts it is an issue. Without specified milestones it is difficult to obtain payment for work which has been completed.
Where teams are not co-located, Agile is not as effective.
From Vijayasarathy and Turk’s (2008) article: Organisational Resistance
Management Apathy Inadequate Training
And from case studies (as described in the previous section)
Many of the benefits of Agile are lost when a telephone is involved in Daily meetings.
Agile methods are not as effective for large teams. In large projects agile does not promote formal lines of communication.
Scant documentation can be detrimental especially to large and complex projects. It is difficult to make the transition from Waterfall to Agile.
Increase in technical debt due to developers being over-eager to show their software.
In addition to this, Juyun Cho’s PhD thesis (2009) which concentrated on the challenges encountered by Agile teams provides a theoretical analysis of challenges with Scrum and an analysis based on two case studies.
Where code check-in is not properly managed, there are problems with delivery of the code.
Teams who are not empowered do not function efficiently.
New employees should have a warming up period to become familiar with the methodology. If not then team efficiency will suffer.
Lack of documentation can be detrimental to Agile projects.
Where customers are not sufficiently involved, projects are likely to fail. Where time is not set aside for integration in large projects, dependencies and
connections between modules may not be covered, leading to failures in the software.
3.4.1 Common Challenges from Literature
Several challenges appear in existing studies, the most common challenge is that of teams having insufficient support from management. This appears in several guises, that
managers themselves do not buy in to Agile and undermine the process, that they do not support teams involved in the difficult process of moving from a Waterfall to an Agile
methodology or that they do not allow Agile teams the confidence to make mistakes. The problem of scaling Agile to large projects is another recurring challenge. The close collaboration required for Agile appears to become more difficult to maintain when there are large numbers of team members involved in the project.
Most of the articles agree that the transition from Waterfall to Agile is a difficult one. It seems to be difficult for a system based on milestones and sign-offs to make the transition to a flexible Agile approach.
The popularity of off-shore teams has brought its own problems, specifically in Agile projects, where teams that are not co-located are perceived to be less effective.
3.4.2 Breakdown of challenges
In the same way that the benefits have been broken down, challenges will also be grouped into two categories, people-related and methodology-related (Conboy and Coyle, 2011; Dybå and Dingsøyr, 2008, Misra, Kumar and Kumar, 2009). Splitting Methodology features into groups (or themes) does not follow a pattern within published literature. Asnawi (2012) splits process management features into three sections but other literature does not follow the same breakdown.
People factors also do not readily break down into categories, although Asnawi (Asnawi, 2012) split ‘cultural’ and ‘involvement’ factors from the main section this split is not reflected in other literature.
Table 3-2 Challenges described in Literature Type By Service Provider (Waters, 2012; Version One, 2013; Layton, 2012; Zolyak, 2013; Ekas, 2012)
By Corporate Research (Begel and Nagappan, 2007) By Academic Study (de Cesare et al, 2010; Asnawi, 2012; Vijayasarathy and Turk, 2008) Agile does not scale to large projects Agile not as effective for large teams Scrum meetings take too long Management do not buy into Agile Teams do not have support from management. Lack of documentation on certain projects, especially large complex ones is a barrier Agile not as effective where teams are not co‐located Lose sight of the big picture
Methodology Teams are not empowered to make decisions Increase in technical debt Change control managed in traditional manner
Project progress is managed in terms of milestones not working software People People
Teams unfamiliar with Agile and insufficient training
Inadequate training.
Co-ordination with other teams is difficult
Project Teams are not motivated Team members are not willing to