Ludmila Orlova HOW USE OF AGILE METHODOLOGY IN SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT INFLUENCE AGILITY OF THE BUSINESS Agile methodology is widely distributed tool for software development. Presented article explore research data about use of these tools, its influence to quality of the end product and performance of development and overall agility of business and companies. KEYWORDS: Agile, software development, agile business CONTENT 1 INTRODUCTION 2 AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT 3 SCALING AGILE 4 AGILE BUSINESS 5 CONCLUSION REFERENCES 1 INTRODUCTION Fast pace of science progress in solid state electronics led to incredible progress of computer devices that on its turn demanded software to control and manage the power of computer calculations and usage. Software engineering emerged in the beginning of 20th century and by the end of it became separate state of art science, activity and the profession for millions. There are about 18.2 million software developers worldwide, a number that is due to rise to 26.4 million by 2019, a 45% increase, says Evans Data Corp. in its latest Global Developer Population and Demographic Study (P. Thibodeau, 2013). Along with growing number of software developers (software development firms, projects and people involved), increased the need for effective management of software development process. This demanded new approach and methodology from business researchers and managers. In the last several decades there was huge number of research, both in IT field and business management dedicated to this area. Popularity of agile software development methods started about decade ago and at present these methods are employed by many big, medium size and small companies. Still growing attention to agile methods from software development specialists confirm these methods filled the lack of management techniques for software development that emerged and developed extremely fast along with speedy advancement of hardware in IT area. Great number of research done in areas such as changes in performance of software development using agile methods or scaling agile for large companies and teams. Also one of modern trends is an attempt to apply agile methodology for project management, marketing, sales and other activities. Goal of this article is to explore influence of application agile methods in software development to agility of whole company and business. Presented work based on secondary data taken from a multiple sources, the work performed as an exploratory study and a review of existing research in the area. 2 AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT Definition of an adjective agile in English is: able to move quickly and easily or able to think and understand quickly (Oxford Dictionary, 2015). The most often contemporary use presented by the following sentence: Relating to or denoting a method of project management, used especially for software development, that is characterized by the division of tasks into ...

1. Ludmila Orlova
HOW USE OF AGILE METHODOLOGY IN SOFTWARE
DEVELOPMENT INFLUENCE AGILITY OF THE BUSINESS
Agile methodology is widely distributed tool for software
development. Presented article explore research data about use
of these tools, its influence to quality of the end product and
performance of development and overall agility of business and
companies.
KEYWORDS:
Agile, software development, agile business
CONTENT
1 INTRODUCTION
2 AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
3 SCALING AGILE
4 AGILE BUSINESS
5 CONCLUSION
REFERENCES
1 INTRODUCTION
Fast pace of science progress in solid state electronics led to
incredible progress of computer devices that on its turn
demanded software to control and manage the power of

2. computer calculations and usage.
Software engineering emerged in the beginning of 20th century
and by the end of it became separate state of art science,
activity and the profession for millions. There are about 18.2
million software developers worldwide, a number that is due to
rise to 26.4 million by 2019, a 45% increase, says Evans Data
Corp. in its latest Global Developer Population and
Demographic Study (P. Thibodeau, 2013). Along with growing
number of software developers (software development firms,
projects and people involved), increased the need for effective
management of software development process. This demanded
new approach and methodology from business researchers and
managers. In the last several decades there was huge number of
research, both in IT field and business management dedicated to
this area.
Popularity of agile software development methods started about
decade ago and at present these methods are employed by many
big, medium size and small companies. Still growing attention
to agile methods from software development specialists confirm
these methods filled the lack of management techniques for
software development that emerged and developed extremely
fast along with speedy advancement of hardware in IT area.
Great number of research done in areas such as changes in
performance of software development using agile methods or
scaling agile for large companies and teams. Also one of
modern trends is an attempt to apply agile methodology for
project management, marketing, sales and other activities. Goal
of this article is to explore influence of application agile
methods in software development to agility of whole company
and business. Presented work based on secondary data taken
from a multiple sources, the work performed as an exploratory
study and a review of existing research in the area.
2 AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

3. Definition of an adjective agile in English is: able to move
quickly and easily or able to think and understand quickly
(Oxford Dictionary, 2015). The most often contemporary use
presented by the following sentence: Relating to or denoting a
method of project management, used especially for software
development, that is characterized by the division of tasks into
short phases of work and frequent reassessment and adaptation
of plans: agile methods replace high-level design with frequent
redesign (ibid).
Software development or simply saying creating programs that
allow computer to operate, originate way back from era of the
first semiconductors and micro chipsets. At present time,
software development more often seen as a complex process
involving tasks such as programing, testing, documenting, bug
fixing, maintaining and updating software product. Also it could
be seen as a process starting from defining the idea and concept
of software and ending with complete ready product. This
process, software development, could be performed in a
different ways; however, if it is considered as a business
process, preferred one is structured, with predictable time
schedule and estimable resource use. The product itself might
vary widely. Product of software development could be an
operating system or dedicated software for solving needs of
particular group of users (for example CAD/CAE/CAM) or
business needs specific. Already since 1950th software
development companies started to look for a methods to
organize their work. One of the first researches was conducted
in 1986 by Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka – The New
Product Development game, addressed issues related to
organization of the software development, comparing it with
rugby game strategy (Takeuchi & Nonaka 1986). In 2001 Agile
manifesto (Beck and others, 2001) was published by and since
then extensive research was done in this field, books and other
materials presented by thousands of researches and enthusiasts.

4. Picture 1 Example of simplified structure of agile software
development. Source: https://www.cprime.com/resources/what-
is-agile-what-is-scrum/
Principles eXtreme Programming (XP) is probably the best
known agile software development methodology. It was
introduced in 1999 by (Kent, 2000) as an answer to problems
faced by the long development cycles in traditional
development. XP emphasizes the facts that systems have vague
user requirements, and acknowledges that rapid changes are
inevitable. Gartner’s analysts (Thomas Murphy and David
Norton) predict ed that by 2012 “agile development methods
will be utilized in 80% of all software development projects”.
Ninety-four percent (94%) of all organizations surveyed now
practice agile. In 2013, the majority of respondents had fewer
than 1,000 people in their software organization. But in 2014,
approximately 35% of respondents had more than 5,000 people
in their organization, and 20% worked in very large
organizations with more than 20,000 people.(9th Annual State
of Agile Survey, 2015).
Analyzing architectural and code quality weaknesses in 186
different enterprisegrade applications built using Java-EE, the
CRASH Report found that over three quarters of the robustness,
security, and changeability scores for applications developed
with a mix of Agile and Waterfall methods were higher than the
median scores for projects using only Agile methods. The
report did not find differences in architectural or code quality
between applications developed with only Agile or Waterfall
methods (CRASH report, 2014).
Begel and Nagappan report on the results of an empirical study
conducted at Microsoft to learn about Agile development and its
perception by people in development, testing, and management.
We found that one-third of the study respondents use Agile

5. methodologies to varying degrees, and most view it favorably
due to improved communication between team members, quick
releases and the increased flexibility of Agile designs. The
Scrum variant of Agile methodologies is by far the most popular
at Microsoft. Our findings also indicate that developers are
most worried about scaling Agile to larger projects (greater than
twenty members), attending too many meetings and the
coordinating Agile and non-Agile teams.(Begel & Nagappan,
2007) Interesting research of Lee & Xia, 2010, suggests that
given the complex relationships among response extensiveness,
response efficiency, team autonomy, team diversity, and
software development performance, software teams face
difficult challenges in identifying and achieving the right
balance between the agility dimensions. The basic principles of
agile and scrum software development state that developers
should be able to be in close contact with the end customers.
The role of product owner define person who keep close contact
with customer, collect information about needs and give priority
for development tasks using different techniques. This fits
perfectly needs of small companies, when there’s only limited
number of customers. Scaling of agile principles for larger
companies need to include several scrum teams, replicated
teams or even scrum of the scrum methods.
Picture 2 What causes agile projects to fail?. Source:
http://www.versionone.com/pdf/state-of-agile-development-
survey-ninth.pdf
3 SCALING AGILE
Scaling agile often understood in meaning of involving more
teams into use of agile methods. This could be divided into two
main directions: one is about bigger software development
teams with large amount of developers involved or distributed
location of teams, other about applying agile for non-software
development activities. Also possible way is to use scrum of

6. scrum, when leaders of several scrum teams form scrum team
themselves. Other example of using agile methodology would
be to apply it for a scientific or scholar research. Both academic
research and the software development produce information-
focused artifacts – either the logics captured in the computer
code or the knowledge captured in the research publications, so
similar principles may be applied to both endeavours (Hazzan &
Tozik, 2014).
Picture3 Scaling methods and approaches by popularity. Source:
http://www.versionone.com/pdf/state-of-agile-development-
survey-ninth.pdf
Significant number of research was performed in field of
scaling agile for software development, count of research
articles only about Nokia experience goes up to hundreds. One
of the most complete works is academic dissertation of Laanti
M., 2012 – Agile methods in large-scale software development
organizations. Work suggests that level of success of using
agile frameworks on a large scale is dictated by how much the
same principles are shared within the organization as a whole
(Laanti, 2012).
Other practices include attempts to use agile methods for non-
software development activities, for example often in our days
to hear about agile project or product management, marketing or
agile sales.
Picture 4 Leffingwell D., Drew Jemilo, Mauricio Zamora, Colin
O’Neill, Alex Yakyma 2011-2014 Scaled Agile Framework®
(SAFe®) . Source: http://scaledagileframework.com/
4 AGILE BUSINESS
Agile development process expects to have connection with
business needs through the person with role “product owner” or

7. “business owner”. In case when business portfolio consists of
several products, each targeted to different business segment,
however interrelated technically with each other, it become
complicated. When business needs are driven by sales team
question arise how to link knowledge about customers and
needs accumulated by sales team with product and business
owners.
Forrester defines business agility as the quality that allows an
enterprise to embrace market and operational change as a matter
of routine (Le Clair, 2014). Constantly changing requirements
that customers put on the software companies are exactly such
ever changing environment. Most of the business models in our
days use OODA loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act), as a
natural basis behind canvas (such as LEAN canvas as one
example) and strategic decision making. Commonly used term
for such approach is Agile, however definition of it is very
complex and varies from the context. The main areas where this
approach is investigated and applied the most are manufacturing
and software development. Over the last ten years Agile
Methods have reached the mainstream: according to a Forrester
study, 35% of the respondents stated that agile most closely
reflect their development methods (West & Grant 2010).
Picture 5 Process model of a Responsive Organization by
Michael Hugos, 2008. Source (Hugos, 2009)
Lately, whole definition of the company shifted from the
structure defined by hierarchy to matrix type. A continuous
learning environment fueled by round-theclock customer insight
and feedback demands teams, environments, decisionmaking
structures, and funding models that exhibit the true meaning of
the word agility — resilience, responsiveness, and learning
(Gothelf 2014). There are many dimensions of agility. Ideal
Agile Enterprise have no limitations on excelling its agility and
employing lean thinking in any of its operations, products or

8. strategies. This idea traces back to Lean Manufacturing and
Lean Enterprise. In our days also Lean startup model gain its
popularity. If I would summarize all these trends, agile business
would be broader concept. It’s about logic behind the company,
it serve as its skeleton. From theoretical point of view, this
belongs rather to Complex Adaptive System theory. Where
behavior of constantly changing and adapting system is
analyzed, and software development company is an example of
such system.
5 CONCLUSION
While being extremely popular in the last decades, agile
software development methods are often refer only to
management methods for software development exclusively.
There are many theoretical claims from agile methodology
adepts, it is expected that using agile methods, any company
could achieve significantly greater performance and quality in
software development or other company’s activity. Data from
the recent research shows that the best result come from the
companies where agility understood in wider context, involving
whole company vision and strategy. Additionally it should be
used alongside with other methods, such as waterfall or Kanban
that provide best results for other than software developments
departments. This article presented an overview of existing data
about applying of agile methods in software development,
scaling agile and applying in elsewhere in the company, like in
marketing or sales, and what effect this make to agility of the
company overall. Traditionally, agile transformation starts from
bottom up, from the lower level of software development. Often
is begins as initiative of developers and only after proven
positive results accepted on higher levels of the company. This
later lead to partly forced decisions of top management to re-
evaluate business strategy and implement agile methods into
company overall operations. Reviewed sources tested against
the suggested model and confirm it. Agility in software

9. development brings better results in terms of quality and speed
of software product development when agile values lifted high
in overall company structure and blended into company vision.
Additionally, agile methods comply with theories of Complex
Adaptive Systems. If we would define company, its strategy and
actions as an CAS – using agile methods proves to be effective
method of achieving agility in process of pursuing business
goals. It appears that agile is effective method to application,
with proven results. But it is rather one of techniques for
business agility. Business agility in its turn should be
considered from Complex Adaptive Systems point of view.
Where constantly changing markets, requirements and trends
force system like a company to adapt and evolve constantly.
REFERENCES
Thibodeau P., India to overtake U.S. on number of developers
by 2017. Computerworld, 2013. Available on the web at
http://www.computerworld.com/article/2483690/it-
careers/india-toovertake-u-s--on-number-of-developers-by-
2017.html
Kent B. Extreme Programming Explained, Addison-Wesley,
2000
CRASH report 2014 Available on the web at
http://www.castsoftware.com/news-events/pressrelease/press-
releases/thank-you/new-report-confirms-agile-waterfall-mix-
produces-the-bestcode-quality
Leffingwell D., Drew Jemilo, Mauricio Zamora, Colin O’Neill,
Alex Yakyma 2011-2014 Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®)
[online, referenced 03.12.2014]. Available on the web at:
http://scaledagileframework.com/
Aaltonen J., 2014. Challenges in managing large-scale agile

10. software development transformation. Master thesis, University
of Turku
Oxford Dictionary online, 2015. . [online, referenced
20.04.2015]. Available on the web:
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/agile
Gothelf J., 2014. Bringing Agile to the Whole Organization.
Harvard business review
Le Clair C., 2014, Measure and improve your business agility,
Forrester. [online, referenced 20.04.2015]. Available on the web
at:
http://www.slideshare.net/forrester/measureandimproveyourbusi
nessagility
Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka, 1986. The New Product
Development game. Harvard business review
J. Gothelf, 2014. Bringing Agile to the Whole Organization.
Harvard business review
Johanna Rothman. "When You Have No Product Owner At All".
http://www.jrothman.com/. Retrieved 2014-06-08
K. Beck and others, 2001, [online, referenced 03.12.2014].
Available on the web at: http://agilemanifesto.org/
Hazzan O. & Tozik S. Agile research, 2014. [online, referenced
10.04.2014]. Available on the web at:
http://www.infoq.com/articles/agile-academic-research
Lee & Xia, 2010, Software Development Agility [online,
referenced 10.04.2014]. Available on the web at:
http://www.robertfeldt.net/courses/agile/lee_2010_integrated_an
alysis_of_sw_dev_agility.pdf

11. Gartner agile research, 2012. [online, referenced 10.04.2014].
Available on the web at:
http://www.infoq.com/news/2012/12/gartner-agile-2012
Begel A. and Nagappan N, 2007 Usage and Perceptions of Agile
Software Development in an Industrial Context: An Exploratory
Study. [online, referenced 10.04.2014]. Available on the web at:
http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=56015
9th Annual State of Agile Survey, 2015. [online, referenced
10.04.2014]. Available on the web at:
http://www.versionone.com/pdf/state-of-agile-development-
survey-ninth.pdf
Hugos M. 2009. Strategically Focused, Tactically Responsive.
SIM Chicago Chapter. Center for systems innovation. online,
[referenced 03.12.2014]. Available on the web at
http://www.simchicago.org/files/Strategically%20Focused%20T
actically%20Responsive.pdf
West D. & J. Hammond 2010. The Forrester Wave: Agile
Development Management tools. Forrester Research
Solve each problem. Explain your reasoning. No credit for
answers with
no explanation. If the problem is a proof, then you need words
as well as
formulas. Explain why your formulas follow one from another.
8-1. Show that each of the following is an exponential family.
Identify the
natural parameter and natural statistic.
(a) The Poi() family of distributions.
(b) The Exp() family of distributions.
(c) The Gam(

12. ; ) family of distributions with both parameters unknown.
The natural parameter vector and natural statistic vector are
both two-
dimensional.
8-2. Suppose X is Poi() and the prior distribution for is Gam(
; ),
where
and are hyperparameters. Find the posterior distribution for .
8-3. Suppose X1, : : :, Xn are IID Gam(
; ), where
is known and is
unknown. Suppose the prior distribution for is Gam(
0; 0), where
0
and 0 are hyperparameters. Find the posterior distribution for .
8-4. Suppose X1, : : :, Xn are IID Unif(0; ) and the prior
distribution for
is Unif(a; b), where a and b are hyperparameters. Find the PDF
of the
posterior distribution for . Under what conditions on x1, : : :,
xn, a, and b
does the solution make no sense?
8-5. Suppose the distribution for data X is Geo(p). Show that
the beta
family of distributions is conjugate.
8-6. Suppose X1, : : :, Xn are IID N(; 1=), where is known and
is
unknown. Find a brand-name family of distributions that is
conjugate.
8-7. Suppose X is Geo(p) and the prior distribution for p is
Beta(
1;
2),
where
1 and
2 are hyperparameters. Find the posterior distribution for

13. p.
8-8. Suppose X1, : : :, Xn are IID N(; 1=), where is known and
is unknown. Suppose the prior distribution for is a distribution
in the
brand-name conjugate family of distributions found in problem
8-6. Find
the posterior distribution for .
1
8-9. Suppose the situation is the same as in problem 8-8. Find
the poste-
rior distribution for =
p
1=. Hint: change-of-variable formula.
8-10. Suppose X1, : : :, Xn are IID Exp().
(a) Suppose the prior distribution for is
at (an improper prior). Find
the posterior distribution for .
(b) Suppose the prior distribution for is proportional to �1 (an
improper
prior). Find the posterior distribution for .
Review Problems from Previous Tests
8-11. Suppose X1, : : :, Xn are IID Exp(), and suppose the prior
distri-
bution for is Gam(
0; 0), where
0 and 0 are hyperparameters. Find
the posterior distribution for :
8-12. Suppose X is Poi(). We have only one observation. And
suppose
the prior distribution for is proportional to �1=2, an improper
prior.
(a) Find the posterior distribution for .
(b) For what values of the data x does your answer to part (a)
make sense?
2

14. Action 2: Identifying the topic
Field of research:
NEMO – negative emotions
The claim process from the company’s point of view – how to
take advantage of negative discussions on social media/ how to
take advantage of negative emotions in customer service.
Now that the field of research has been chosen, the scope of
research is narrowed down, and it is easier to draw an outline in
order to identify the specific topic. Choosing the topic is part of
the problem formulation process[footnoteRef:1]. [1: Business
Research Methods by Krishnaswami, O.R. and Satyaprasad,
B.G.; Himalaya Publishing House; 2010; Chapter 2; page 23]
The topic can simply be formulated as the title of the article.
The topic could be formulated in an informal, relaxed, possibly
non-academic manner for the first draft, as in 99% of the cases,
the final title will differ from this one as the research gets re-
oriented and the article gets improved. What’s important is that
for any reader the topic makes sense and is fully understandable
and give little risks of misunderstanding.
The topic expresses the issue addressed by the research work in
the field of research identified in Action 1. It may include the
actual issues/challenges themselves and some, or an hypothesis
to be proven, as well as rarely all, but more often some of the
following elements: field of research, context, target
populations, constraints, theories, methodological approach,
variables and/or cause to effect relationships investigated. The
goal being not to drawn the reader under complexity but to use
as little as possible information without losing
comprehensiveness of the research purpose.
Research article topic:
How to benefit from negative emotions in customer service?

15. Action 1: Choosing the field of research
Choosing your field of research might be a fairly
straightforward affair; on the other hand, you may need to learn
more about different areas of research to find the best fit for
your interests and career goals. For example, you might find
your interests compatible with your current job’s issues or
challenges.
Perhaps you know what could benefit your company, but aren't
sure if you want to work on that, or have the resources for doing
it, or will be able to publish the results (indeed, making
information available for other researchers…and competitors).
Once should, as a researcher, ask him/herself the questions:
· Are the results of the research useful (for a given company,
the sector of industry, the research community)?
· What am I interested in?
· Do I have the matching resources in time, data access, and
respondent (interviewee)?
What could help?
· Talk to people working in the field, go to visit. Speak with a
wide range of people and consider multiple perspectives.
· Read, watch and observe, be aware of where there are
challenges/issues/problems/gaps which could be addressed and
given answers to through your research.
My field or research is (give a set of 5 to 10 keywords or a
short sentence):
NEMO – negative emotions
The claim process from the company’s point of view – how to
take advantage of negative discussions on social media/ how to
take advantage of negative emotions in customer service.
Example: Risk Management process in the Service Industry –
Efficiency, quality control and metrics for performance

16. measurement – SME