A Disciplined Approach to Adopting Agile Practices: The Agile Adoption
  Framework
Microsoft Word - Final_Agile07_revised2.doc
A Disciplined Approach to Adopting Agile Practices: 
The Agile Adoption Framework 
Ahmed Sidky, James Arthur  
(asidky@vt.edu, arthur@vt.edu) 
Virginia Tech 
Abstract 
Many organizations aspire to adopt agile processes to 
take advantage of the numerous benefits that it offers to 
an organization. Those benefits include, but are not 
limited to, quicker return on investment, better software 
quality, and higher customer satisfaction. To date 
however, there is no structured process (at least in the 
public domain) that guides organizations in adopting 
agile practices. To address this problem we present the 
Agile Adoption Framework. The framework consists of 
two components: an agile measurement index, and a 4-
Stage process, that together guide and assist the agile 
adoption efforts of organizations. More specifically, the 
agile measurement index is used to identify the agile 
potential of projects and organizations. The 4-Stage 
process, on the other hand, helps determine (a) whether 
or not organizations are ready for agile adoption, and  
(b) guided by their potential, what set of agile practices 
can and should be introduced.   
1. Introduction and Motivation  
Over the past few years organizations have asked the 
agile community “Why should we adopt agile 
practices?” [27]. The numerous success stories 
highlighting the benefits reaped by organizations that 
have successfully adopted agile practices provide an 
answer to this question [49] [41] [9] [8] [34] [32].  As a 
result, many organizations are now aspiring to adopt agile 
practices. Once again, however, they are turning to the 
agile community, but with a different question: “How do 
we proceed with adopting agile practices?” [27]. 
Unfortunately, there exists no structured approach (at 
least in the public domain) for agile adoption.  The 
absence of guidance and assistance to organizations 
pursuing agility is the main problem addressed by this 
paper.  
A major factor contributing to this absence is the 
number of issues a structured approach must address 
when providing organizations with guidance for the 
successful adoption of agile practices. These include, 
among other issues, determining: (1) the organization's 
readiness for agility; (2) the practices it should adopt; (3) 
the potential difficulties in adopting them; (4) and finally, 
the necessary organizational preparations for the adoption 
of agile practices.  
The Agile Adoption Framework introduced in this 
paper, is an attempt to addresses the issues mentioned 
above by providing a structured and repeatable approach 
designed to guide and assist agile adoption efforts.  It 
assists the agile community in supporting the growing 
demand from organizations that want to adopt agile 
practices. The Agile Adoption Framework, however, is 
only one essential ingredient, the other is an agile coach 
who knows how to apply that framework.  Such a person 
can be an agile consultant hired to facilitate the process, 
or an in-house employee with sufficient training on agile 
methods and the use of the framework.  
The Agile Adoption Framework has two main 
components: (1) a measurement index for estimating agile 
potential, and (2) a 4-Stage process that employs the 
measurement index in determining which, and to what 
extent, agile practices can be introduced into an 
organization. Figure 1 illustrates the various components 
of the framework and the relationships among them.  
Measurement Index 4-Stage Process 
Stage 1: Identify 
Discontinuing Factors 
Agile Adoption Framework 
Agile 
Practices 
to Adopt 
Stage 2: Project 
Level Assessment
The 5 Levels Agility 
populated with 
Agile Practices 
Figure 1. Overview of the Agile Adoption 
Framework 
Stage 4:  
Reconciliation 
Stage 3:  
Organizational 
Assessment 
The first component, the agile measurement index, is a 
scale the coach uses to identify the agile potential of a 
project or organization. The agile measurement index is 
used in the process component of the framework, which 
consists of four stages working together to guide 
organizations in identifying agile practices that best fit 
into their environment. The four stages are: 
• Stage 1: Identification of Discontinuing Factors. 
Discovers the presence of any showstoppers that can 
prevent the adoption process from succeeding.  
• Stage 2: Project Level Assessment. Utilizes the agile 
measurement index to determine the target level of 
agility for a particular project.  
• Stage 3: Organizational Readiness Assessment.  Uses 
the agile measurement index to assess the extent to 
which the organization can achieve the target agility 
level identified for a project.  
• Stage 4: Reconciliation. Determines the final set of 
agile practices to be adopted by reconciling the target 
agile level for a project (from Stage 2) with the 
readiness of the embodying organization (from Stage 
3).  
Section 2 presents the structure and details of the 
agile measurement index. Each of the four stages in the 
process is then presented in detail in Section 3. Section 4 
presents industry feedback regarding the framework.  
Section 5 provides concluding remarks about the Agile 
Adoption Framework along with comments from the 
agile community. 
2. Agile Measurement Index 
One of the concerns organizations have when 
seeking to adopt agile practices is determining how agile 
they can become [23]. The agile potential (i.e. the degree 
to which that entity can adopt agile practices) of projects 
and organizations is influenced by the circumstances 
surrounding them. To determine the agile potential the 
coach (or the one conducting the assessment) needs use a 
measurement index or scale that can assess the agility of 
an entity. The agile adoption framework refers to this 
scale as an agile measurement index.  
The Agile Adoption Framework uses the agile 
measurement index to determine the agile potential of 
projects and organizations. The measurement index is 
composed of four components: 
1. Agile Levels 
2. Agile Principles 
3. Agile Practices and Concepts 
4. Indicators.  
Sections 2.1 through 2.4 introduce each component of the 
agile measurement index. Section 2.5 focuses on issues 
related to the tailorability of the index.  
2.1. Agile Levels 
Agile levels, as depicted in Figure 2a, are considered 
the units of the measurement scale as they enumerate the 
different possible degrees of agility for a project or 
organization. The agile potential of a project or 
organization is expressed in terms the highest agile level 
it can achieve. The attainment of a particular level 
symbolizes that the project or organization has realized 
and embraced the essential elements needed to establish a 
particular degree of agile effectiveness. For example, 
when the elements inherent to enhancing communication 
and collaboration are embodied within the development 
process, then the Agile Level 1 (Collaborative) is 
attainted. However, before one can expect to move to 
Level 2 status, all practices associated with Agile Level 1 
must be achieved (or achievable). 
The 5 Levels of Agility are designed to represent the 
core qualities of the Agile Manifesto [2], rather than the 
Agile Principles 
A B C E D 
Agile Principles 
A B C E D 
(a) Empty Agile Levels (b) Empty Agile Levels  
with Agile Principles 
(c) Agile Levels populated with 
Agile Practices categorized 
within Agile Principles 
Agility 
Increases 
Figure 2. Components of the 5 Levels of Agility (Indicators are not shown) 
qualities related to any particular agile method. After 
careful analysis of the manifesto, five essential agile 
qualities have been identified. Those qualities comprise 
the 5 Levels of Agility that are used the agile 
measurement index: 
• Level 1: Collaborative. This level denotes the 
fostering of communication and collaboration 
between all stakeholders. The dimension of 
collaboration is the foundation of agile software 
development [45] [17] [18]. 
• Level 2: Evolutionary. Evolutionary development is 
the early and continuous delivery of software. It too 
is fundamental because every agile method assumes 
its presence [33].  
• Level 3: Effective.  The next quality an agile 
development process must embrace is that of 
developing high quality, working software in an 
efficient an effective manner. This quality is needed 
to prepare the development process so that it can 
respond to constant change without jeopardizing the 
software system being developed [29] [18].  
• Level 4: Adaptive. This level constitutes establishing 
the agile quality of responding to change in the 
process. Defining and responding to multiple levels 
of feedback is essential in this level [26].   
• Level 5: Ambient. The last level concentrates on 
establishing a vibrant environment needed to sustain 
and foster agility throughout an organization.  
Each of the agile levels is composed of a set of agile 
practices that introduce and sustain the agile quality 
pertinent to that level. The selection of agile practices and 
concepts assigned to each agile level is guided by the 
second component of the measurement index, agile 
principles.  
2.2. Agile Principles 
Agile principles are the essential characteristics that 
must be reflected in a process before it is considered 
Agile.  For example, two key agile principles are human 
centric, which refers to the reliance on people and the 
interaction between them, and technical excellence, which 
implies the use of procedures that produce and maintain 
the highest quality of code possible. The Agile Manifesto 
outlines 12 principles that characterize agile development 
processes [13]. After careful grouping and 
summarization, five agile principles emerge that capture 
the essence of the 12. These five principles guide the 
refinement or tailoring of the 5 Levels of Agility: 
• Embrace change to deliver customer value [12]. The 
success of a software development effort is based on 
the extent to which it helps deliver customer value. In 
many cases the development team, as well as the 
customer, are in a continuous learning process as to 
the requirements necessary to realize additional 
customer value.  Hence, an attitude of welcoming 
and embracing change should be maintained 
throughout the software development effort. 
•  Plan and deliver software frequently [13] [20] [38]. 
Early and frequent delivery of working software is 
crucial, because it provides the customer with a 
functional piece of the product to review and provide 
feedback on. This feedback is essential for the 
process of planning for upcoming iterations as it 
shapes the scope and direction of the software 
development effort. 
• Human centric [17]. The reliance on people and the 
interactions among them is a cornerstone in the 
definition of agile software processes.  
• Technical excellence [26] [31]. Agile developers are 
committed to producing only the highest quality code 
possible, because high quality code is essential in 
fast-paced development environments, such as the 
ones characterized as agile. 
• Customer collaboration [13]. Inspired from the 
original statement of the agile manifesto, there must 
be significant and frequent interaction between the 
customers, developers, and all the stakeholders of the 
project to ensure that the product being developed 
satisfies the business needs of the customer. 
In effect, agile principles are used to ensure that the agile 
levels embody the essential characteristics of agility. 
Figure 2b illustrates the relationship between agile levels 
and agile principles. Each agile level should contain agile 
practices associated with most, if not all, of the agile 
principles. The principle reflects the approach that the 
agile practice uses to promote the agile quality pertinent 
to a level. For example, all the practices in Level 3 
(Effective) are promoting the agile objective of 
developing high quality, working software in an efficient 
an effective manner. How that objective is achieved 
though, is determined by the practices associated with 
agile principles spanning each level. Along the same 
lines, practices associated with the technical excellence 
principle will promote its agile objective by focusing on 
enhancing the technical aspect of the process, while 
practices associated with the human centric principle 
promote enhancing the human aspect of the process.  
The real essence of the 5 Levels of Agility, however, 
is in the agile practices it enunciates. The next section 
presents the third component of the agile measurement 
index – the agile practices. 
2.3. Agile Practices  
Agile practices are concrete activities and practical 
techniques that are used to develop and manage software 
projects in a manner consistent with the agile principles. 
For example, paired programming, user stories, and 
collaborative planning are all agile practices. Since the 
agile levels are composed of agile practices (organized 
along the line of agile principles – see Figure 2c), they are 
considered the basic building block of the agile 
measurement index. The attainment of an agile level is 
achieved only when the agile practices associated with it 
are adopted.  
After surveying the agile methods currently used in 
industry [29] [31] [3], 40 distinct agile practices were 
chosen to populate the 5 Levels of Agility. These 
practices, arranged along the lines of the agile levels and 
principles, are illustrated in Table 1. (The underlining of 
the practices should be ignored at this point, but is 
discussed later in the paper.)  Although a detailed 
discussion about each of the agile practices and concepts 
is outside the scope of this paper, the references 
associated with each are good starting points to learn 
more about them.  
Agile Principles  
Embrace Change to 
Deliver Customer 
Value 
Plan and Deliver 
Software Frequently Human Centric Technical Excellence 
Customer 
Collaboration 
Level 5 
Ambient 
Establishing a 
vibrant 
environment to 
sustain agility 
Low process ceremony  
[33, 38] 
Agile project estimation 
[20] 
Ideal agile physical 
setup [33] 
Test driven 
development [11] 
Paired programming 
[48] 
No/minimal number of 
level -1 or 1b people on 
team [17, 15] 
Frequent face-to-face 
interaction between 
developers & users  
(collocated) [12] 
Level 4 
Adaptive 
Responding to 
change through 
multiple levels of 
feedback 
Client driven iterations   
[33] 
Continuous customer 
satisfaction feedback 
[35, 42]  
Smaller and more 
frequent releases (4-8 
weeks) [35] 
Adaptive planning [33] 
[20] 
Daily progress tracking 
meetings [6] 
Agile documentation 
[39, 31] 
User stories [21] 
Customer immediately 
accessible [15] 
Customer contract 
revolves around 
commitment of 
collaboration [26, 35] 
Level 3: 
Effective 
Developing high 
quality, working 
software in an 
efficient an 
effective manner 
Risk driven iterations 
[33] 
Plan features not tasks. 
[20] 
Maintain a list of all 
features and their status 
(backlog) [31] 
Self organizing teams 
[33, 38, 31, 18] 
Frequent  
face-to-face 
communication   
[38, 18, 13] 
Continuous integration 
[33] 
Continuous 
improvement 
(refactoring)  
[31, 12, 24, 5]. 
Unit tests [28] 
30% of level 2 and level 
3 people [17, 15] 
Level 2: 
Evolutionary 
Delivering 
software early and 
continuously 
Evolutionary 
requirements  [33] 
Continuous  
delivery [33, 31, 26, 12] 
Planning at  
different levels [20] 
 Software configuration 
management [31] 
Tracking iteration 
progress [33] 
No big design up front 
(BDUF) [4, 12] 
Customer contract 
reflective of 
evolutionary 
development [26, 35] 
Level 1: 
Collaborative 
Enhancing 
communication 
and collaboration 
Reflect and tune 
process  [35, 42] 
Collaborative  
planning [38, 18, 33] 
Collaborative teams 
[45] 
Empowered and 
motivated teams [13] 
Coding standards  
[29, 47, 36] 
Knowledge sharing 
tools [33] 
Task volunteering  [33]  
Customer commitment 
to work with developing 
team [13] 
Table 1. The 5 Levels of Agility populated with Agile Practices and Concepts 
2.4. Indicators 
A set of indicators, or questions, must accompany 
each agile practice or concept in the measurement index. 
The agile coach uses these indicators (or questions) to 
measure the extent to which the organization is ready to 
adopt an agile practice or concept. The Goal Question 
Metric approach (GQM) [10] and the Objectives 
Principles Attributes (OPA) Framework [7] influence the 
approach used to devise the indicators for each practice. 
Each indicator is designed to measure a particular 
organizational characteristic necessary for the successful 
adoption of the agile practice to which the indicator is 
related. (This is the goal.) Depending on the question, a 
manager, developer, or the agile coach is designated to 
answer it, either subjectively or objectively.  
For example, assume the coach wants to determine 
the extent to which an organization is ready to adopt 
coding standards (Level 1, Technical Excellence). In this 
respect, two organizational characteristics that need to be 
assessed are: (1) to what extent do the developers 
understand the benefits behind coding standards, and (2) 
how willing are they to conform to coding standards. 
Several indicators (or questions) are used to assess each 
of these characteristics. For example, to assess the second 
(willingness), the assessor might ask the developers to 
what extent would they abide by coding standards even 
when under a time constraint.  
The 5 Levels of Agility contain approximately 300 
different indicators for the 40 agile practices. A detailed 
listing of all the indicators associated with each agile 
level is found in the framework’s technical 
documentation [43].  
The 5 Levels of Agility shown in Table 1 is one 
instance of the agile measurement index. Can there be, 
however, alternative instances? We address that issue in 
the next section.  
2.5. Tailorability of the 5 Levels of Agility 
The 5 Levels of Agility, along with all their practices 
and indicators, were presented to members of the agile 
community. Several of its leaders encouraged us to 
consider factors that might lead to other instances of the 5 
Levels of Agility. These factors are incorporating 
business values and reorganizing the practices based on 
experiential success. The two following subsections 
elaborate on these factors.  
2.5.1 Incorporating Business Values. Business values 
refer to the added benefit realized by an organization after 
adopting agile practices. For most organizations, the 
achievement of these business values is the real incentive 
behind adopting agility. For example, decreasing time to 
market or increasing product quality are common 
business values that organizations hope to realize from 
adopting agile practices. Augustine [40] and Elssamadisy 
[22] have suggested that the levels of agility might be 
prioritized according to the business values an 
organization hopes to realize. This suggestion is both 
valuable and beneficial to the growth of the framework, 
because currently, the 5 Levels of Agility are not 
associated with any business values; instead they are 
based on the qualities and values of agility. The 
relationship between agile and business values is parallel 
to that between the Agile Manifesto (focusing on agile 
values) and the Declaration of Interdependence (capturing 
the business values) [2] [1].  
2.5.2 Reorganizing the Practices based on Experiential 
Success. The agile coaches and consultants Cockburn 
[16], Cohn [19], and Wake [46], in addition to others, 
suggest a reorganization of the agile practices based on 
experiential successes. That is, they advocate that the type 
of project and the experiences gained from previous 
adoption efforts can, and should, serve as a basis for 
formulating a better arrangement of the practices within 
the agile levels. For example, Cohn suggests that user 
stories be introduced in the first level of agility, because, 
from his experience, they enhance collaboration and 
communication between the stakeholders with regards to 
requirements.  Others suggest that pair programming be 
in the first level because it helps establish collaboration 
within teams.  
This inability to reach a consensus on the position of 
agile practice emphasizes an important factor in providing 
guidance in an agile adoption effort: the adherence to 
agile principles when establishing the levels is paramount, 
not the positions of the actual practices. The intention 
behind the levels of agility is to provide a framework to 
guide the adoption process, not to dictate it 
Based on the above rationalizations we must conclude 
that a tailorable measurement index is both desirable and 
beneficial. However, when tailoring or creating another 
instance of an agile measurement index, it is important to 
observe the following guidelines to ensure that the new 
measurement index has all the necessary components and 
a valid structure: 
• Ensure that multiple levels exist. Levels are needed to 
enumerate the degrees of agility. Without levels, the 
power of the measurement index, when used in 
conducting comparative measurements of agility, is 
diminished.  
• The measurement index is based on practices and 
concepts. Foundational to the agile measurement 
index are agile practices and concepts. The extent to 
which agile practices and concepts can be adopted 
determines the agility of a process.  
• Each practice or concept has indicators. When 
introducing a new agile practice (other than the 40 
identified) to the measurement index, it is important 
that the practice has an associated set of valid and 
sufficient indicators. Without indicators, there is no 
means by which an assessment can be conducted.  
The next section presents the second component of the 
Agile Adoption Framework – the 4-Stage Process. This 
component utilizes the 5 Levels of Agility (i.e., the agile 
measurement index) to provide structured guidance and 
assistance to organizations seeking to adopt agile 
practices.  
3. The 4-Stage Process for Agile Adoption 
The 4-Stage assessment process is the “backbone” of the 
Agile Adoption Framework. As depicted in Figure 3, it 
first provides an assessment component that helps 
determine if (or when) an organization is ready to move 
toward agility, i.e., make the go/no-go decision. 
Secondly, the process guides and assists the agile coach 
in the process of identifying which agile practices the 
organization should adopt. The four stages are grouped 
according to the objective they help to achieve:  
• Objective 1:  Make Go/No-Go Decision 
o Stage 1: Discontinuing Factors 
• Objective 2: Identify Agile Practices to Adopt 
o Stage 2: Project Level Assessment 
o Stage 3: Organizational Readiness Assessment 
o Stage 4: Reconciliation 
The next sections explain in detail how each stage of the 
4-Stage process contributes to achieving its enunciated 
objectives.  
3.1. Making the Go/No-Go Decision 
The first objective of the process is to provide 
organizations with a method for deciding whether or not 
to proceed with agile adoption initiatives. Since adopting 
agile practices is essentially a type of Software Process 
Improvement (SPI), a pre-assessment phase is needed 
before the decision to start the initiative is made. 
Traditionally, pre-assessments determine the ability of the 
organization to undertake an SPI initiative [25]. 
Organizations lacking the factors necessary for a 
successful SPI effort are considered “not ready.”  In that 
situation the SPI effort is suspended until the missing 
factors can be mitigated.  
Similarly, with respect to agile adoption, pre-
assessment helps identify factors in an organization that 
can prevent the successful adoption of agile practices.  If 
such factors exist, the organization must eliminate them 
before continuing with the adoption effort. Pre-
assessment processes like these are important because 
they save the organization time, money and effort by 
identifying missing or existing factors that can cause an 
SPI initiative to fail [30]. 
  The next section describes how Stage 1 of the 
process guides and assists organizations in making 
Go/No-go decisions concerning the adoption of agile 
practices. This decision is determined by a pre-assessment 
activity that identifies any discontinuing factors.  
3.1.1 Stage 1: Identifying Discontinuing Factors. The 
intent of Stage 1 is to provide an assessment process that 
identifies factors which could prevent the successful 
adoption of agile practices. These are called discontinuing 
factors, and can vary from one organization to another. 
Typically, they pertain to an organization’s resources 
including money, time and effort, as well as the support 
of its executive leadership. The three discontinuing 
factors identified by the Agile Adoption Framework are:  
• Inappropriate Need for Agility: This refers to 
situations where, from a business or software 
development perspective, adopting agility does not 
add any value [44] . 
•  Lack of Sufficient Funds: When funds are 
unavailable or insufficient to support the agile 
adoption effort, then an adoption process is not 
feasible. 
• Absence of Executive Support: If committed support 
from executive sponsors is absent, then effective and 
substantial change in the organization is unlikely to 
occur [44] [37].  
Figure 3. The 4-Stage Process for Agile Adoption 
No-go 
Target Agile Level 
for the Project 
Target Agile Level 
for the Organization 
Suspend 
Adoption Effort 
Agile Practices 
 to Adopt 
Stage 1: 
Identify
Discontinuing 
Factors 
Stage 2: 
Project Level 
Assessment 
Stage 3: 
Organizational 
Assessment 
Stage 4: 
Reconciliation 
When an organization demonstrates any of these 
discontinuing factors, it is unprepared to move towards 
agility and should suspend the adoption process until the 
environment is more supportive.  
Indicators focusing on organizational characteristics 
are used to assess the degree to which a discontinuing 
factor is present in the organization. The assessor uses 
one or more indicators to evaluate each organizational 
characteristic. For example, two organizational 
characteristics that can be measured to determine whether 
there is a Lack of Sufficient Funds are (1) the dollar 
amount allocated to the process improvement effort and 
(2) the ability to actually spend the funds for agile 
adoption. An example of a question (indicator) used to 
assess the ability to spend funds on agile adoption is Can 
the funds be spent towards any process improvement 
activity? Another assessment question is Are there any 
restrictions on the type of activities for which these funds 
can be used? Over 20 indicators are included in the Agile 
Adoption Framework to assess the presence of 
discontinuing factors in organizations [43].  
3.2. Identify Agile Practices to Adopt 
If Stage 1 indicates that the organization is ready to 
move towards agility, the journey of introducing agile 
practices into the development process begins.  This 
involves determining which agile practices and concepts 
are most suitable for the organization to adopt.  Actually, 
to be more precise, the Agile Adoption Framework first 
determines the agile practices that a particular project can 
adopt, not the whole organization. The framework is 
based on the fundamental belief that each project in an 
organization can adopt a different degree of agility based 
on its context. Therefore, the last three stages provide 
guidelines for identifying the agile practices suitable for a 
single project: 
• Stage 2: Project level Assessment: identifies the 
maximum level of agility the project can reach. This 
is also known as the target agile level. 
• Stage 3: Organizational Readiness Assessment: 
determines the extent to which the organization is 
ready to accommodate the project’s target agile level. 
• Stage 4: Reconciliation: settles the differences, if 
any, between the highest level of agility the project 
can adopt and the level of agility the organization is 
ready to embrace, and determines the agile practices 
that are to be adopted.  
Sections 3.2.1 through 3.2.3 describe each of these stages, 
respectively.  
3.2.1 Stage 2: Project level Assessment. Stage 2 is the 
first stage of the adoption process that utilizes the 5 
Levels of Agility presented earlier. The objective of this 
stage is to identify the highest level of agility a project 
can achieve. This is called the target level, and is one of 
the 5 agile levels.  
In theory, all projects should aspire to reach the 
highest level of agility possible. However, the reality is 
that circumstances, often outside of the organization’s 
control, surround each project. These circumstances 
become constraining factors if they adversely affect the 
organizations’ ability to adopt an agile practice.  Thus, 
constraining factors limit the level of agility to which a 
project aspires.  
For example, frequent face-to-face communication is 
a desired agile practice at level 3. A factor that is needed 
to successfully adopt this practice is near team proximity. 
Assume that the project and organization have no say in 
changing this project characteristic (i.e. factor), because it 
is outside of their control. If the project level assessment 
determines that the factor (near team proximity) is 
missing for this project, then the highest level of agility 
for this project will be the same level of agility in which 
this agile practice is found (which is Level 3 in this case).  
Because achieving the highest level of agility 
depends on project circumstances outside of an 
organization’s control, the first step in Project Level 
Assessment is to identify those agile practices and 
concepts that rely on such circumstances. These agile 
practices are known as limiting agile practices, because if 
the project characteristics needed to support these 
practices are not present, the inability to adopt the 
practice constrains or limits the level of agility attainable 
by the project. In Table 1, which illustrates the 5 agile 
levels, the limiting agile practices are underlined.  
The assessment process defined by Stage 2 focuses 
on determining the target level of agility for a project. 
More specifically, it examines only those factors 
associated with the limiting agile practice, and measures 
the extent to which they are present. The assessment is 
conducted using the indicators associated with each 
limiting agile practice. The process starts by examining 
the limiting practices at Agile Level 1, and then moves 
upward on the scale. Once factors needed for the adoption 
of a limiting practice are found to be missing, the 
assessment process stops, and the highest level of agility 
attainable for the project is set to be the level at which 
that limiting practice is found.  
In summary, the target level of agility is determined 
to be the point where the assessment process discovers 
that one of the project characteristics needed to adopt a 
limiting agile practice or concept is missing, and neither 
the project nor organization can do anything to influence 
or change this circumstance. After the target agile level 
for the project is identified, the next step in the journey is 
to conduct an organizational readiness assessment to 
determine the set of agile practices (for the project) that 
can be adopted.  
3.2.2 Stage 3: Organizational Readiness Assessment. 
Identifying the target level for a project does not 
necessarily mean that that level is achievable. To 
determine the extent to which that target level can be 
achieved, the organization must be assessed to determine 
whether it is ready to adopt each of the agile practices and 
concepts associated up to, and including, the target level. 
Investing time and effort in this type of pre-adoption 
assessment of each agile practice increases the probability 
of success for the overall transition to agility [14], 
because it significantly reduces the risks associated with 
the agile adoption process.  
Similar to Stage 2, Stage 3 of the process also relies 
on the 5 Levels of Agility. Again, the indicators play a 
critical role in determining the extent to which the target 
level can be achieved. To save time and money during 
this assessment stage, instead of assessing how ready the 
organization is relative to adopting the practices in all 5 
agile levels, only those within the target agile level and 
below are used. The assessor uses the set of indicators 
(questions) associated with the agile practices to measure 
the extent to which the requisite organizational 
characteristics are present.  
For example, Collaborative Planning is an agile 
concept in Level 1. To assess the readiness of the 
organization to adopt this concept, the following are some 
of the organizational characteristics that need to be 
present: (a) collaborative management style, (b) 
management buy-in to adopt the agile practice, (c) 
transparency of management, (d) small power-distance in 
the organization, and (e) developers buy-in to adopt the 
agile practice  
Agile 
practices 
Organizational 
characteristic 
needed 
NA PA LA FA 
Reflect and tune …..     
Transparency of 
management   X  
Small power-distance in 
the organization    X 
Developers buy-in    X 
Collaborative  
management style  X   
Collaborative 
planning 
Management buy-in X    
Coding 
standards …..     
NA: Not Achieved (0%-35%)    
LA: Largely Achieved (65%-85%) 
PA: Partially Achieved (35%-65%) 
FA:  Fully Achieved (85%-100%) 
Table 2. Organizational Assessment Results 
Each of these organizational characteristics is 
assessed using a number of different questions. 
Depending on the question, a manager or developer 
within the organization, or the assessor himself or herself 
answers it. The 5 Levels of Agility incorporate 
approximately 300 indicators to measure the various 
organizational characteristics related to agile practices 
and concepts [43].  
The result of the organizational assessment stage is a 
table that depicts the extent to which each organizational 
characteristic is achieved (see Table 2). This format for 
displaying results is beneficial to executives and decision 
makers as it draws attention to the characteristics of the 
organization that can cause problems in adopting a 
practice. Resembling project level assessment, 
determining the highest agile level an organization is 
capable of achieving is dependent on the organization’s 
readiness to adopt the practices in that agile level. If the 
organizational characteristics needed for a practice are 
found to be not achieved or only partially achieved, then 
this is an indication that the organization is not ready to 
adopt that practice. As a result, the highest level of agility 
the organization can reach becomes the level at which a 
necessary organizational characteristic is missing. For 
example, in Table 2 since collaborative planning is in 
Agile Level 1, and since two of the characteristics that it 
needs are deficient, the highest level of agility for that 
organization is Level 1. 
3.2.3 Stage 4: Reconciliation. Following the 
organizational readiness assessment, the agile level 
achievable by the organization is known. Prior to that, 
Stage 2 had identified the agile level that the project 
aspires to adopt. Therefore, the final step, reconciliation, 
is necessary to determine the agile practices the project 
will adopt.  During this phase the differences between the 
projects’ target level and the organization’s readiness 
level are resolved to determine the final set of agile 
practices that will be adopted/employed. Three different 
scenarios are possible during this stage: 
• Organization Readiness Level > Project Target 
Level: No reconciliation is needed and all the 
practices within the project’s agile level and below 
become the chosen agile practices for adoption. This 
is a rare case because the project environment is 
usually contained with the organization.   
• Organization Readiness Level = Project Target 
Level: No reconciliation is needed and all the 
practices within the project’s agile level and below 
become the chosen agile practices for adoption. This 
is the ideal case since the project is achieving 100% 
of its agile potential. 
• Organization Readiness Level < Project Target 
Level: Reconciliation is necessary.  As discussed 
below, the framework provides two options for 
reconciling this situation.  
(1) The first option relies on the how ready and willing 
the organization is for changes and improvements. The 
results of the organizational assessment have identified 
exactly which characteristics are hindering the 
organization from reaching higher levels of agility (i.e. 
the project’s target level).  If changing any of these 
characteristics is within the control of the organization, 
then the organization can undertake the necessary steps to 
improve them. If all of the recommended changes have 
been successfully made, then the organization can support 
agile practices at the project’s target level.  Otherwise, the 
projects’ target level must be lowered accordingly.  
(2) The second option is suitable for organizations that 
are unwilling to invest time, effort or money towards 
change, and only wants to adopt those agile practices that 
are within their current capacity. In this case, it is 
recommended to adopt only the agile practices the 
organization is ready for. The obvious downside to this 
approach is that the project is restricted to operating at a 
lower level of agility than its potential.  
This reconciliation stage helps the organization in 
realistically identifying the agile practices it can adopt. At 
the same time, if the organization is able and willing to 
improve, then this stage guides it as to where the 
improvements need to occur so that the project can 
operate at its full agile potential. Moreover, by utilizing 
this approach, the organization prepares itself sufficiently 
before starting the process of introducing agile practices 
into the development process. 
The next section provides a brief overview of the 
feedback gathered from presentations of the Agile 
Adoption Framework to members of the agile 
community.  
4. Quantitative Feedback about the Agile 
Adoption Framework 
The Agile Adoption Framework was presented to 28 
members of the agile community. The feedback was 
gathered during 90-minute personal visits to the 
participants (or a group of them) in which the framework 
was presented and then discussed. After the presentation, 
the participants filled out a survey eliciting their 
feedback. In this section the results of the participants’ 
feedback are examined from two perspectives, the first 
being the role or position of the participant, and the 
second being their years of experience. Additionally the 
feedback for the 5 Levels of Agility is presented 
separately from that of the 4-Stage process, since they 
were gathered through separate questionnaires. 
4.1. Results for the 5 Levels of Agility. 
The questionnaire concerning the 5 Levels of Agility 
focused on gathering feedback about its 
comprehensiveness, practicality, necessity, as well as 
whether the practices were placed at appropriate levels. 
Figure 4 illustrates that, in general, the participants were 
mostly in agreement with regard to comprehensiveness, 
practicality and necessity. However, some variability is 
observed among the participants concerning relevance. 
The most prominent concern was the position of the agile 
practices within the levels. We conjecture that this is due 
to the fact that each participant has different experiences, 
depending on their role, years of experience and the 
projects in which they have been involved. As a result, 
each participant places a different priority on the use of 
practices as reflected in their experiences. These 
beneficial insights and feedback have led us to recognize 
the utility of, and need for, the flexibility to tailor the 5 
Levels of Agility to fit experiences and perhaps business 
goals. When examining the results classified by role, it is 
important to note that agile coaches and consultants had 
more positive feedback, in general, than the other 
positions. The results from the comprehensiveness, 
practicality and necessity show that there is in need for 
structure and guidance on how to organize these agile 
practices and concepts – this is exactly what the 5 Levels 
of Agility is intended to provide.   
4.2. Results for the 4- Stage Process. 
Figure 5 shows the feedback obtained relative to the 
4-Stage assessment process. The feedback focused on the 
understandability of the process, its practicality, 
necessity, completeness, and effectiveness. As compared 
to the feedback on the 5 Levels of Agility, the feedback 
on the 4-Stage process is even more encouraging. Note 
that the agreement level is proportional to the years of 
experience and the roles of the individuals: the more 
experience and direct involvement with agile adoption, 
the higher the agreement rating. All of the highly 
experienced people strongly agreed that the process is 
clear and easy to understand. This can be expected, 
because the process is designed to model their particular 
activities. The completeness of the 4-Stage process had 
the lowest agreement percentage when compared to the 
other aspects of the process. We conjecture that a major 
factor contributing to this was the process used to gather 
the feedback. More specifically, only 90 minutes were 
allotted for presenting the framework to the participants, 
having follow-up discussions, and conducting the survey. 
We expect that this timeframe was too short for the 
participant (or anyone) to fully grasp the essence of the 
complete framework and the substantial set of 
relationships among its constituent components. This 
expectation is somewhat confirmed by the participants 
that returned the questionnaires at a later time (and having 
the time to reflect on the presentation and supporting 
material) – they both strongly agreed that the 4-Stage 
process is complete. 
5. Conclusion  
The Agile Adoption Framework is a first step toward 
addressing the need for providing organizations with a 
structured and repeatable approach to guide and assist 
them in the move toward agility. The framework is 
independent of any one particular agile method or style. 
Therefore, there are no restrictions on using XP or 
SCRUM or any other agile style within the framework. 
Moreover, the framework has two levels of assessment: 
one at the project level and another on an organizational 
level. Hence, it accommodates the uniqueness of each 
project, and at the same time, recognizes that each project 
is surrounded by, and is part of, an overall organization 
that must be ready to adopt the requisite agile practices. 
We view the Agile Adoption Framework as an initial 
contribution towards answering the complex question of 
how to adopt agile practices.  
In summary, we propose this framework as an 
approach to guide and assist organizations in their quest 
to adopt agile practices. Through identifying and 
assessing the presence of discontinuing factors, 
organizations can make a go/no-go decision regarding the 
move toward agility. By determining the target level for a 
project and then assessing the organization to determine 
the extent to which it is ready to achieve that target level 
of agility, the framework manages to provide coaches 
with a realistic set of agile practices for the project to 
adopt. The 4-Stage process assessment, through its 
utilization of the 5 Levels of Agility, provides an 
Figure 4. Results of 5 Levels of Agility grouped by role and experience 
Grouped by Years of Experience Grouped by Role/Position 
1-2 Years of Experience (11 Participants)
COMP PRAC NESS RELV
Developers  (8 Participants)
COMP PRAC NESS RELV  
3-5 Years of Experience (9 Participants)
COMP PRAC NESS RELV
Management / Administrative  (8 Participants)
COMP PRAC NESS RELV  
6-12 Years of Experience (8 Participants) 
COMP PRAC NESS RELV
Agile Coaches/Consultants  (12 Participants)
COMP PRAC NESS RELV  
 Abbreviations 
COMP: Comprehensiveness   
PRAC: Practicality 
NESS: Necessity   
                  RELV: Relevance 
 Strongly Agree 
Slightly Agree 
Neither Agree nor Disagree 
Slightly Disagree 
Strongly Disagree 
extensive outline of the areas within the organization that 
need improvement before the adoption effort starts.  
While we recognize that the framework has significant 
room for improvement, we are encouraged by the 
comments given about the Agile Adoption Framework 
from members of the agile community:  
• “I think this is fantastic (work)” –Agile consultant 
with 12 years experience 
• “This is the RIGHT time for this work! Excellent 
Job” – Agile consultant with 8 years experience  
• “Overall this is first-class work and I endorse this 
work as legitimate in its interest and merit to our 
industry” (paraphrased due to length) – XP Coach 
with 6 years experience 
6. References 
[1] Declaration of Interdependence, http://pmdoi.org/, 
2005. 
[2] Manifesto for Agile Software Devleopment, 
www.agilemanifesto.org, Utah, Feb 2001. 
[3] P. Abrahamsson, S. Outi, J. Ronkainen and J. 
Warsta, Agile software development methods - 
Review and analysis, VTT Electronics Finland, 
2002, pp. 112. 
[4] S. Ambler, Agile Modeling: Effective Practices for 
Extreme Programming and the Unified Process 
Wiley, 2002. 
[5] S. W. Ambler and P. J. Sadalage, Refactoring 
Databases: Evolutionary Database Design, 
Addison-Wesley Professional, 2006. 
[6] L. Amy and C. Raylene, Effects of agile practices 
on social factors, ACM Press, St. Louis, Missouri, 
2005. 
[7] J. Arthur and R. Nance, Managing Software 
Quality: A Measurement Framework for 
Assessment and Prediction, Springer, 2002. 
Grouped by Years of Experience Grouped by Role/Position 
1-2 Years of Experience (11 Participants)
UNDER PRAC NESS COMP EFEC
Developers (8 Participants)
UNDER PRAC NESS COMP EFEC  
3-5 Years of Experience (9 Participants)
UNDER PRAC NESS COMP EFEC
Management / Administrative (8 Participants)
UNDER PRAC NESS COMP EFEC  
6-12 Years of Experience (8 Participants)
UNDER PRAC NESS COMP EFEC
Agile Coaches/Consultants (12 Participants)
UNDER PRAC NESS COMP EFEC  
 Abbreviations 
UNDER: Understandability   
PRAC: Practicality  
NESS: Necessity  
COMP: Completeness 
EFEC: Effectiveness 
 Strongly Agree 
Slightly Agree 
Neither Agree nor Disagree 
Slightly Disagree 
Strongly Disagree 
Figure 5. Results of the 4-Stage Process grouped by role and experience 
[8] L. Barnett, Agile Survey Results: Solid Experience 
And Real Results Agile Journal, 2006. 
[9] L. Barnett and C. Schwaber, Adopting Agile 
Development Processes; Improve Time-To-Benefits 
For Software Projects Forrester Research, 2004. 
[10] V. Basili, Software modeling and measurement: the 
Goal/Question/Metric paradigm, University of 
Maryland at College Park, 1992, pp. 24. 
[11] Beck, Test Driven Development: By Example, 
Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., 
2002. 
[12] K. Beck, Extreme Programming Explained: 
Embrace Change, Addison-Wesley, 2000. 
[13] K. Beck, R. C. Martin, A. Cockburn, M. Fowler 
and J. Highsmith, Manifesto for Agile Software 
Devleopment, www.agilemanifesto.org, Utah, Feb 
2001. 
[14] B. Boehm and R. Turner, Management challenges 
to implementing agile processes in traditional 
development organizations, Software, IEEE, 22 
(2005), pp. 30-39. 
[15] B. W. Boehm and R. Turner, Balancing Agility and 
Discipline, Addison-Wesley Professional, Boston, 
2003. 
[16] A. Cockburn, Personal Communication Salt Lake 
City, UT, November  2006. 
[17] A. Cockburn, Agile Software Development Pearson 
Education, Indianapolis, 2001. 
[18] A. Cockburn and J. Highsmith, Agile Software 
Development: The People Factor, Computer, 
Volume 34 (2001), pp. Pages: 131 - 133    
[19] M. Cohn, Personal Communication, Dayton, OH, 
October 2006. 
[20] M. Cohn, Agile Estimating and Planning  Prentice 
Hall PTR, 2005. 
[21] M. Cohn, User Stories Applied, Addison -Wesley, 
Boston, 2004. 
[22] A. Elssamadisy, Personal Communication, 
Amherst, MA, October 2006. 
[23] A. Elssamadisy, Getting Beyond "It Depends!" 
Being Specific But Not Prescriptive About Agile 
Practice Adoption Agile Journal, 2006. 
[24] M. Fowler, K. Beck, J. Brant, W. Opdyke and D. 
Roberts, Refactoring: Improving the Design of 
Existing Code, Addison Wesley, Reading, 
Massachusetts, 1999. 
[25] R. B. Grady, Successful software process 
improvement, Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1997. 
[26] J. Highsmith, Agile Software Development 
Ecosystems, Pearson Education, Indianapolis, 2002. 
[27] J. Highsmith, Agile: From Rogue Teams to 
Enterprise Acceptance Cutter Consortium: 
Business Technology Trends and Impacts, 2006. 
[28] A. Hunt and D. Thomas, Pragmatic Unit Testing in 
C\# with NUnit, The Pragmatic Programmers, 2004. 
[29] J. Hunt, Agile software construction Springer, 
London 2006. 
[30] P.-H. Jan and J. Jorn, AIM - Ability Improvement 
Model, 2005. 
[31] A. S. Koch, Agile software development : 
evaluating the methods for your organization, 
Artech House, Boston, MA 2005. 
[32] S. Kuppuswami, K. Vivekanandan, P. Ramaswamy 
and P. Rodrigues, The effects of individual XP 
practices on software development effort, 
SIGSOFT Softw. Eng. Notes, 28 (2003), pp. 6-6. 
[33] C. Larman, Agile and Iterative Development, 
Pearson Education, Boston, 2004. 
[34] A. Law and R. Charron, Effects of agile practices 
on social factors, Proceedings of the 2005 
workshop on Human and social factors of software 
engineering, ACM Press, St. Louis, Missouri, 2005. 
[35] R. C. Martin, Agile Software Development, 
Principles, Patterns, and Practices, Prentice Hall 
2002. 
[36] J. W. Newkirk and R. C. Martin, Extreme 
Programming in Practice Prentice Hall, 2001. 
[37] A. Pukinskis, 5 stumbling blocks for new corporate 
agile projects, the agile blog, 2005. 
[38] D. Rosenberg, M. Stephens and M. Collins-Cope, 
Agile development with ICONIX process : people, 
process, and pragmatism Apress Berkeley, CA 
2005. 
[39] A. Rueping, Agile Documentation : A Pattern 
Guide to Producing Lightweight Documents for 
Software Projects John Wiley & Sons 2003. 
[40] A. Sanjiv, Personal Communication, Reston, VA, 
October 2006. 
[41] B. Schatz and I. Abdelshafi, Primavera gets agile: 
a successful transition to agile development, 
Software, IEEE, 22 (2005), pp. 36-42. 
[42] K. Schwaber and M. Beedle, Agile Software 
Development with SCRUM, Prentice Hall,, 2002. 
[43] A. Sidky and J. Arthur, Agile Adoption Process 
Framework - Indicators Document, CORR - 
cs.SE/0612092 2006. 
[44] M. K. Spayd, Evolving agile in the enterprise: 
implementing XP on a grand scale, 2003, pp. 60-
[45] J. Tabaka, Collaboration Explained; Facilitation 
Skills for Software Project Leaders, Addison-
Wesley, 2005. 
[46] W. Wake, Personal Communication, Richmond, 
VA, September 2006. 
[47] W. C. Wake, Extreme Programming Explored, 
Addison-Wesley Professional, 2001. 
[48] L. Williams and R. Kessler, Pair Programming 
Illuminated, Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing 
Co., Inc., 2002. 
[49] L. Williams, R. R. Kessler, W. Cunningham and R. 
Jeffries, Strengthening the case for pair 
programming, Software, IEEE, 17 (2000), pp. 19-
