Examining decision characteristics & challenges for agile software development

•In-depth case via interviews, focus groups, meeting observation & document analysis.•We conducted 18 individual interviews, two focus groups and observed 21 meetings.•Results identified particular decision characteristics across four key agile values.•Results show characteristics' decision process, intelligence and quality challenges.•This study provides a framework to evaluate agile decision making.

Although agile software development is often associated with improved decision making, existing studies tend to focus on narrow aspects of decision making in such environments. There is a lack of clarity on how teams make and evaluate a myriad of decisions from software feature inception to product delivery and refinement. Indeed there is relatively little known about a) the decision characteristics related to agile values, and b) the challenges they present for decision making on agile teams. We present an in-depth exploratory case study based on a pluralistic approach comprising semi-structured interviews, focus groups, team meeting observations, and document analysis. The study identifies failings of decision making in an agile setting. Explicitly considering the decision process, information intelligence used in decision making, and decision quality, the key contribution of this paper is the development of an over-arching framework of agile decision making, which identifies particular decision characteristics across 4 key agile values and the related challenges for agile team decision making. It provides a framework for researchers and practitioners to evaluate the decision challenges of an agile software development team and to improve decision quality.