An empirically-developed framework for Agile transition and adoption: A Grounded Theory approach

• We show how a large-scale empirical study using Grounded Theory has been used to study Agile transition and adoption process.
• An empirically-developed transition framework to facilitate Agile transformation is proposed.
• We describe the key structural characteristics and activities of the transition framework.
• We report how the inductively developed framework can be a good replacement for the previous one.
• We report empirical evaluation of the findings and theoretical and practical implications of them.

To date, few Agile transition and adoption frameworks have been proposed in the software industry. However, using them is not easy in practice and primarily requires a huge organizational overhead because of their complex and non-flexible structure. These drawbacks make such frameworks difficult to apply in small and medium-sized companies. We have conducted a large-scale empirical research study using Grounded Theory approach with the participation of 49 Agile experts from 13 different countries. This study inductively developed a substantive Agile transition and adoption framework which appears to be simple and flexible. The main aim of this paper is to present the developed framework. The primary characteristics of this framework, including iterative, gradual, continuous, and value-based are in line with the Agile approach and show promise of being useful in software companies and organizations, regardless of size. This paper also describes how various steps of this framework could help software companies to achieve Agile transformation.