A Reliability-Focused Adaptation of Scrum: An Empirical Study on Software Reliability in Agile Teams

Software products should be reliable enough to gain customer satisfaction. Paying more attention to the development of highly reliable software products requires additional time and effort in software projects, often leading to increased development overhead. This issue presents a challenge when employing Agile methods, which prioritize flexibility and rapid iterations. While Agile methodologies emphasize adaptability, integrating extra practices to ensure objective reliability remains a critical concern. In recent years, the demand for high-quality and failure-resistant software has significantly increased, necessitating new strategies to incorporate reliability engineering into Agile frameworks. Given the growing complexity of modern software systems, achieving a balance between agility and reliability is crucial for software development teams. This paper investigates the combination of Scrum, the most widely adopted Agile method, with software reliability engineering (SRE) practices. The study evaluates the additional cost of implementing reliability-focused practices in a Scrum-based project through a case study. A comprehensive analysis was conducted to assess the impact of these practices on project timelines, software defects, and overall team performance. The study also examined the extent to which reliability-focused modifications influence team productivity and customer satisfaction. The results indicate that the modifications made to Scrum led to approximately 3.9% higher human effort. However, the integration of SRE practices significantly reduced the number of failures and rework occurrences, demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Moreover, the study highlights the importance of structured reliability assessment techniques, which can aid teams in proactively identifying and mitigating potential software failures before product deployment. These findings suggest that, despite a marginal increase in project cost, the enhanced reliability justifies the investment. The proposed methodology can serve as a model for Agile teams seeking to improve software quality while maintaining development speed and flexibility. This study highlights the potential of balancing agility and reliability in software development, offering valuable insights for Agile teams aiming to improve software quality without compromising efficiency.