Name
A novel technique to assess Agile systems for stability.
Date & Time
Thursday, June 15, 2023, 1:30 PM - 3:00 PM
Rob Healy
Description

Agile systems, like the kanban and scrum frameworks, are built on assumptions of sustainability and stability, however, there is little empirical evidence on whether such systems are stable in practice or not. Therefore, in this study we aim to inspect the stability of Agile systems by leveraging the concept of stability described in Queueing Theory. We define a novel metric, the Stability Metric, as a way of assessing queueing systems, especially Agile systems. We inspect 926 Jira projects in 14 organizations with over 1.6 million product back-log items using this metric. The analysis showed that 74% of these Jira projects were not stable and stable systems, on average, had product backlog sizes 10 times smaller than unstable ones. These results suggest that while the goal of Agile is to create a sustainable, stable way of working, this is not guaranteed, and a better understanding of systems and queues may be required to help de-sign, create, coach, and maintain optimal Agile systems.

Location Name
Grote Zaal, 2nd floor
Full Address
Pakhuis de Zwijger
Piet Heinkade 179
Amsterdam 1019 HC
Netherlands
Session Type
Research Paper
submissions_id
1949
Track Color
Yellow
Session Length
20
Keywords
Agile
Queueing Theory
Stability
Jira
Backlogs
Learning Objectives
Measure, measure, measure... and what lies behind
Track
Process Innovation