The role of human, organizational and social sustainability values in agile software development

Abstract

Context: Over the last decade, agile software development methodology has gained popularity in the IT industry. In agile, value is traditionally seen as economic value which generates profit for an organization. Human, organizational and social sustainability values are still largely unexplored. Goal: The main contribution of the study is to investigate the role of human, organizational and social sustainability values in agile software development and to suggest techniques to integrate human, organizational and social sustainability values into day-to-day work of agile teams. Method: The study was carried out through literature review on 30 selected articles, development of proposed techniques and case study with two agile teams in an organization. Result: There were three main features of the values in agile software development context observed: value serves as standard or criteria, value transcends specific actions and situations, and values are ordered by their relative importance. The values were also linked to performances in agile team, process and product. There was no clear evidence of value-based tools, techniques, or framework used by the industry in the identified practices of values in agile software development. Twenty three potential solutions were collected from the literature and two value-based techniques, value retrospective and consideration, were developed to help the integration of the values. Conclusion: The study presented the initial findings on how human values, organizational, and social sustainability values are considered in agile software development and the potential solutions to integrate those values in agile software development.