Comparative analysis of agile practices across software organisations in Europe and the USA

Background: Agile practices were present in the software industry from the 70s. It is believed that agile practices are meant to solve problems faced with the traditional development process. Since software development is uncertain, the approach needs to be adaptable according to the needs of the project. Since this process involves many people from different locations and backgrounds, it is fair to explore how agile practices are being adapted differently based on the location. Objectives: The goal of this study is to provide insights into how adaptation of agile practices can be different in Europe and the USA. Three objectives were defined in order to achieve this goal. 1)Identifying the differences in adaptation of agile practices between the Euro- pean and US agile teams. 2)Exploring the impact of COVID-19 on agile practices in European and US teams. 3)Understanding the changes made in identified agile practices after COVID-19 when people are back in office. Method: The research method for this study is semi-structured interviews because of the flexibility it offers to extract useful information from the participants in a conversational style. The data collected from the interviews is analysed through a grounded theory approach as it is suitable to derive information from qualitative data based on patterns, behaviours and actions. Results: A total of 11 participants contributed to this study. Six of them are based in Europe while the other five are based in the USA. It has been understood that the background of the person and the culture of the team’s working location affects how agile practices are being adapted. Coming to the teams being able to transition to remote work during the pandemic was easy as everything was already remote work friendly and there was not a lot of change in how the agile practices were adapted except for the frequency of stand-ups increasing as there was a constant need for communication which went back to normal when everyone is back in office after the pandemic. Conclusions: The background of the team members and the geographical location of the team do influence the team’s way of working. While the agile practices are similar in all the teams, the frequency of the agile-specific meetings and how strictly they stick to these principles vary from each team.