Log in

Can Agile Enterprise Architecture be Implemented Successfully in Distributed Agile Development? Empirical Findings

  • Original Research
  • Published:
Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

A potential solution to the high failure rate in distributed agile development and enhance the success of projects is through implementing agile enterprise architecture, though the success is still to be established. The present paper empirically investigates the gap, by defining the role and commitment of implementing agile enterprise architecture on distributed agile development. The data were collected by interviewing 12 key team members and observing four team meetings over 2 months and analyzing using thematic analysis. The present study suggests that implementing agile enterprise architecture is possible in distributed agile development and may have a positive impact on project success. However, many questions demand further investigation.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
EUR 32.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or Ebook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price includes VAT (Germany)

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Fig. 1
Fig. 2

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Abdallah, A., et al. (2021). Enterprise architecture measurement: A systematic literature review. Journal of Theoretical and Applied Information Technology, 99(6), 1257–1268.

    Google Scholar 

  • Acharya, S. (2019). Beyond learning outcomes: Impact of organizational flexibility on strategic performance measures of commercial e-learning providers. Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management, 20(1), 31–41.

    Google Scholar 

  • AgileManifesto (2001). Manifesto for agile software development. https://agilemanifesto.org/, viewed 20 September 2020

  • Ali Babar, M., et al. (2009). An industrial case of exploiting product line architectures in agile software development. In Proceedings of the 13th International Software Product Line Conference (pp. 171–179). Carnegie Mellon University. http://hdl.handle.net/10344/1142

  • Alzoubi, Y. I., & Gill, A. Q. (2020). An empirical investigation of geographically distributed agile development: The agile enterprise architecture is a communication enabler. IEEE Access, 8, 80269–80289.

    Google Scholar 

  • Alzoubi, Y. I., & Gill, A. Q. (2021). The critical communication challenges between geographically distributed agile development teams: Empirical findings. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 64(4), 322–337.

    Google Scholar 

  • Alzoubi, Y. I., et al. (2015). Distributed agile development communication: An agile architecture driven framework. Journal of Software, 10(6), 681–694.

    Google Scholar 

  • Alzoubi, Y. I., et al. (2016). Empirical studies of geographically distributed agile development communication challenges: A systematic review. Information and Management, 53(1), 22–37.

    Google Scholar 

  • Alzoubi, Y. I., et al. (2018). A measurement model to analyze the effect of agile enterprise architecture on geographically distributed agile development. Journal of Software Engineering Research and Development, 6(4), 1–24.

    Google Scholar 

  • Amin, S. M., & Horowitz, B. M. (2008). Toward agile and resilient large-scale systems: Adaptive robust national/international infrastructures. Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management, 9(1), 27–39.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ammad, G., et al. (2019). An Empirical study to investigate the impact of communication issues in GSD in Pakistan’s IT industry. IEEE Access, 7, 171648–171672.

    Google Scholar 

  • Batra, D. (2009). Modified agile practices for outsourced software projects. Communications of the ACM, 52(9), 143–148.

    Google Scholar 

  • Batra, D., et al. (2010). Balancing agile and structured development approaches to successfully manage large distributed software projects: A case study from the cruise line industry. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 27(1), 379–394.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bente, S., et al. (2012). Collaborative enterprise architecture: Enriching EA with lean, agile, and enterprise 2.0 practices. Morgan Kaufmann.

  • Brewer, E. C., & Holmes, T. L. (2016). Better communication= better teams: A communication exercise to improve team performance. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 59(3), 288–298.

    Google Scholar 

  • Britto, R., et al. (2019). Performance evolution of newcomers in large-scale distributed software projects: An industrial case study. In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Global Software Engineering (ICGSE 2019) (pp. 1–11). IEEE.

  • Buchan, J., et al. (2019). Coordination in distributed agile software development: Insights from a COTS-based case study. In Proceedings of the Australasian Conference on Information Systems (ACIS 2019), Perth, Australia, AISel (pp. 942–952).

  • Cammin, P., et al. (2021). Assessing requirements for agile enterprise architecture management: A multiple-case study. In Proceedings of the 54th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Grand Wailea, Maui, Hawaii, ScholarSpace (pp. 6007–6016).

  • Canat, M., et al. (2018). Enterprise architecture and agile development: Friends or foes? In Proceedings of the 22nd international enterprise distributed object computing workshop (EDOCW 2018) (pp. 176–183). IEEE.

  • Cataldo, M., et al. (2008). Socio-technical congruence: A framework for assessing the impact of technical and work dependencies on software development productivity. In The proceedings of the second ACM-IEEE international symposium on Empirical software engineering and measurement (ISESEM 2008) (pp. 2–11). ACM.

  • Chikhale, M. M., & Mansouri, M. (2015). An agile and collaborative framework for effective governance to enhance management in large-scale enterprise business systems: The case of Apple Inc. Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management, 16(3), 283–293.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dingsøyr, T., et al. (2018). Coordinating knowledge work in multiteam programs: Findings from a large-scale agile development program. Project Management Journal, 49(6), 64–77.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dreesen, T., et al. (2020). The impact of modes, styles, and congruence of control on agile teams: Insights from a multiple case study. In Proceedings of the 53rd Hawaii international conference on system sciences, Grand Wailea, Hawaii, AISel (pp. 6247–6256).

  • Evans, S., & Bahrami, H. (2020). Super-Flexibility in Practice: Insights from a Crisis. Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management, 21(3), 207–214.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ghantous, G. B., & Gill, A. Q. (2019). An agile-DevOps reference architecture for teaching enterprise agile. International Journal of Learning, Teaching and Educational Research, 18(7), 128–144.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gill, A. Q. (2013). Towards the development of an adaptive enterprise service system model. In Proceedings of the 19th Americas conference on information systems, Chicago, Illinois (pp. 1–9).

  • Gill, A. Q. (2014). The gill framework—creating agile or adaptive enterprise project management capability for enterprise agility. http://aqgill.blogspot.com/, Viewed 5 October 2020

  • Gill, A. Q. (2015). Adaptive cloud enterprise architecture. World Scientific.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gill, A. Q., et al. (2018). Scaling for agility: A reference model for hybrid traditional-agile software development methodologies. Information Systems Frontiers, 20, 315–341.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gill, A. Q., & Maheshwari, D. (2021). Applying DevOps for distributed agile development: A case study. In H. R. Arabnia, L. Deligiannidis, F. G. Tinetti, & Q. Tran (Eds.), Advances in software engineering, education, and e-Learning. Transactions on computational science and computational intelligence (pp. 719–728). Cham: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Guo, H., et al. (2021). Agile enterprise architecture by leveraging use cases. In Proceedings of the 16th international conference on evaluation of novel approaches to software engineering (ENASE 2021), Online Streaming, SCITEPRESS (pp. 501–509).

  • Hanschke, S., et al. (2015). Integrating agile software development and enterprise architecture management. In Proceedings of the 48th Hawaii international conference on system sciences 2015, Kauai, HI (pp. 4099–4108). IEEE.

  • Hauder, M., et al. (2014). Agile enterprise architecture management: An analysis on the application of agile principles. In Proceedings of the 4th international symposium on business modeling and software design.

  • Highsmith, J. (2009). Agile project management: Creating innovative products. Pearson Education.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hoda, R., et al. (2017). Systematic literature reviews in agile software development: A tertiary study. Information and Software Technology, 85, 60–70.

    Google Scholar 

  • Horlach, B., et al. (2020). Everyone's going to be an architect: Design principles for architectural thinking in agile organizations. In Proceedings of the 53rd Hawaii international conference on system sciences, Grand Wailea, Hawaii, AISel

  • Kaddoumi, T., & Watfa, M. (2021). A foundational framework for agile enterprise architecture. International Journal of Lean Six Sigma. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJLSS-03-2021-0057

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Korhonen, J. J., et al. (2016). Adaptive enterprise architecture for the future: Towards a reconceptualization of EA. In Proceedings of the 18th conference on business informatics (CBI) (pp. 272–281). IEEE.

  • Kornstadt, A., & Sauer, J. (2007). Tackling offshore communication challenges with agile architecture-centric development. In Proceedings of the working conference on software architecture (WICSA 2007) Mumbai (pp. 28–31). IEEE.

  • Kulak, D., & Li, H. (2017). The journey to enterprise agility: Systems thinking and organizational legacy. Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lee, J.-C., & Chen, C.-Y. (2019). Investigating the environmental antecedents of organizations’ intention to adopt agile software development. Journal of Enterprise Information Management, 32(5), 869–886.

    Google Scholar 

  • Leffingwell, D. (2007). Scaling software agility: Best practices for large enterprises. Pearson Education.

    Google Scholar 

  • Madison, J. (2010). Agile architecture interactions. IEEE Software, 27(2), 41–48.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mayring, P. (2010). Qualitative inhaltsanalyse. In R. Buber & H. H. Holzmüller (Eds.), Qualitative Marktforschung. Munich: Gabler. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-8349-9441-7_42

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • McCarthy, S., et al. (2019). Towards a framework for shared understanding and shared commitment in agile distributed ISD project teams. In Proceedings of the 27th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS 2019) (pp. 1–15). AISel.

  • Medeiros, P., et al. (2021). An agile approach for modeling enterprise architectures. In Proceedings of the 23rd international conference on enterprise information systems (ICEIS 2021), Online Streaming, SCITEPRESS (pp. 659–670).

  • Nundlall, C., & Nagowah, S. D. (2021). Task allocation and coordination in distributed agile software development: A systematic review. International Journal of Information Technology, 13(1), 321–330.

    Google Scholar 

  • Paul, R., et al. (2016). Global virtual team performance: The effect of coordination effectiveness, trust, and team cohesion. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 59(3), 186–202.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pedrycz, W. (2006). Quantitative logic-based framework for agile methodologies. Journal of Systems Architecture, 52(11), 700–707.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pillai, A. K. R., et al. (2012). Implementing integrated Lean Six Sigma for software development: A flexibility framework for managing the continuity: Change dichotomy. Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management, 13(2), 107–116.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ribeiro, F. L., & Fernandes, M. T. (2010). Exploring agile methods in construction small and medium enterprises: A case study. Journal of Enterprise Information Management, 23(2), 161–180.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ross, J. W., et al. (2006). Enterprise architecture as strategy: Creating a foundation for business execution. Harvard Business Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Runeson, P., & Höst, M. (2009). Guidelines for conducting and reporting case study research in software engineering. Empirical Software Engineering, 14(2), 131.

    Google Scholar 

  • Samiei, E., & Habibi, J. (2020). The mutual relation between enterprise resource planning and knowledge management: A review. Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management, 21(1), 53–66.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sauer, J. (2006). Agile practices in offshore outsourcing—an analysis of published experiences. In Proceedings of the 29th information systems research seminar in scandinavia (Vol. 29, pp. 12–15).

  • Shameem, M., et al. (2018). Prioritizing challenges of agile process in distributed software development environment using analytic hierarchy process. Journal of Software: Evolution and Process, 30(11), e1979.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shameem, M., et al. (2020). Taxonomical classification of barriers for scaling agile methods in global software development environment using fuzzy analytic hierarchy process. Applied Soft Computing, 90, 106122.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sharp, H., & Robinson, H. (2008). Collaboration and co-ordination in mature eXtreme programming teams. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 66(7), 506–518.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stadler, M., et al. (2019). Agile distributed software development in nine central European teams: Challenges, benefits, and recommendations. International Journal of Computer Science and Information Technology, 11(1), 1–18.

    Google Scholar 

  • Subramanian, N., & Suresh, M. (2022). Assessment framework for Agile HRM practices. Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management, 23(1), 135–149.

  • Taghavifard, M. T., & Majidian, S. (2022). Identifying Cloud Computing Risks based on Firm’s Ambidexterity Performance using Fuzzy VIKOR Technique. Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management, 23(1), 113–133.

    Google Scholar 

  • Turnu, I., et al. (2006). Modeling and simulation of open source development using an agile practice. Journal of Systems Architecture, 52(11), 610–618.

    Google Scholar 

  • Uludag, Ö., et al. (2019a). What to expect from enterprise architects in large-scale agile development? A multiple-case study. In Proceedings of the 25th Americas conference on information systems, Cancún, México.

  • Uludag, Ö., et al. (2019b). Establishing architecture guidelines in large-scale agile development through institutional pressures: A single-case study. In Proceedings of the 25th Americas conference on information systems, Cancún, México.

  • Yadav, V. (2016). A flexible management approach for globally distributed software projects. Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management, 17(1), 29–40.

    Google Scholar 

  • Yin, R. K. (2009). Case study research: Design and methods. Sage Publication.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zaitsev, A., et al. (2020). Coordination artifacts in agile Software development. Information and Organization, 30(2), 100288.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We are very grateful to all participants in the group interviews. We also thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

Funding

This research received no external funding.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yehia Ibrahim Alzoubi.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Ethical Statement

The manuscript does not report results of a questionnaire.

Availability of Data and Materials

Not applicable.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Alzoubi, Y.I., Gill, A.Q. Can Agile Enterprise Architecture be Implemented Successfully in Distributed Agile Development? Empirical Findings. Glob J Flex Syst Manag 23, 221–235 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40171-022-00298-w

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40171-022-00298-w

Keywords

Navigation