Perceptions about agility enablers and their relative importance: A collation

Abstract

As software houses increasingly align themselves to Agile Software Development paradigm, the issue of what constitutes agility is coming to the forefront. Is it enough to follow the rituals and practices of some agile method to deliver the promises of the paradigm? Or, certain enablers need to be in place to prepare the context for the methods to deliver? What are these attributes of agility and what are their relative contributions? This paper intends to initiate a debate on this issue by collating perceptions of agile researchers and practitioners. For this purpose, we administered Delphi Method separately on two panels to see how the researchers and the practitioners perceive the list of enablers, and their relative importance. It is intriguing to note that while the two panels have similar perceptions about most of the enablers, their views differ substantially regarding others. Further investigation into these seeming differences is called for.