#1303 Agile Software Engineering change request accepted

A new sub-category is needed to address the lack of clarity around agile software development.

Despite some improvements in SFA7, the framework currently reflects a plan-driven model of software development processes. While agile is mentioned is several sub-categories, The overall framework looks like a plan-driven model (with tasks configured around design, implement and test). Agile software development, organises these same tasks within increments (rather than development phases). Nowadays, more than 50% of software development projects use agile methods (in UK and Netherlands and probably USA).

https://www.stateofagile.com/

A new sub-category is proposed to empahsise skllls that are currently poorly represented in SFA7, namely: product champion, agile coach and

Product Champion (product owner in Scrum), further details...

https://www.agilealliance.org/glossary/product-owner

Agile Coach (scrum master in Scrum), further details

https://www.agilealliance.org/glossary/scrum-master

Self-organising Team member, further details

https://www.agilealliance.org/glossary/team

Here are some empirical research papers that describe these missing skills

Bass, J. M. (2015). How product owner teams scale agile methods to large distributed enterprises. Empirical Software Engineering, 20(6), 1525–1557. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-014-9322-z

Bass, J. M. (2016). Artefacts and agile method tailoring in large-scale offshore software development programmes. Information and Software Technology, 75, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infsof.2016.03.001

Noll, J., Razzak, M. A., Bass, J. M., & Beecham, S. (2017). A Study of the Scrum Master’s Role. Product-Focused Software Process Improvement, 307–323. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69926-4_22

Current status of this request: accepted

What we decided

Its important that agile software engineering skills and working practices can be described in SFIA.

What we changed

Changes made to existing SFIA skills so that they can be applied effectively to agile software engineering working practices.

A new skill is proposed for some of the people/team working practices associated with agile.

A prototype skill has been developed to provide end to end software life cycle environment typically associated with DevOps / DevSecOps and related variants.

A new sub-category is off limited use

because SFIA skills can only appear in one sub-category which would imply that means duplicate/cloned skills prefixed with agile would be required.
SFIA's views can achieve the same for agile software engineering.