Study goals
This work seeks to contribute to the understanding of the process involved in the agile value “Responding to change over following a plan” from the perspective of system dynamics.
Relevance / originality
It explores a literature gap, which often focuses on isolated agile practices, disregarding the holistic dynamics of development and its interdependencies. Based on the results obtained, reflections are proposed that can guide improvements in the software development dynamic.
Methodology / approach
Qualitative case study in agile software development projects. Interviews and document analysis were conducted, enabling an abductive content analysis from a system dynamics perspective, resulting in a feedback loop diagram.
Main results
A Feedback Loop Diagram was developed to represent the agile value “Responding to change over following a plan” as experienced by agile teams, along with a matrix that depicts scenarios encountered by teams when following plans and responding to changes.
Theoretical / methodological contributions
It reinforces the understanding that agile planning, as a mechanism for iterative learning, is essential in software development (Cohn, 2005) and offers a theoretical contribution by integrating multiple levels of planning with sociotechnical variables into a single Feedback Loop Diagram.
Social / management contributions
It is recommended that agile teams incorporate adaptive capacity into the planning process, doing so in an anticipatory and proactive manner by integrating additional processes into the adopted agile approach, such as product management and UX/UI practices.