AI-gile: Revisiting Agile principles in the era of AI

Agile principles have progressively emerged in Software Engineering (SE) to address in fact the intrinsic complexity of modern software developments. The recent rise of AI is generating a disruptive impact in the different disciplines and domains, including also SE. We propose an integrated concise analysis of the Agile principles and their possible evolution in the era of AI. We refer this revised version to as AI-gile to put emphasis on the evolving nature of the Agile philosophy, in this specific case as a response to a widely disruptive technological advance. We adopted a hybrid analysis method, which combines a traditional critical analysis of major contributions in literature with AI-driven topic modeling. Such an approach enables a seamless semi-qualitative approach to enhance consistency within a naturally interdisciplinary context. Holistically, our analysis confirms an on-going and potentially radical evolution of Software Engineering as a discipline in response to the incorporation of AI at different levels. Our synthesis indicates that AI’s influence on Agile principles clusters into three recurring patterns: (a) human/AI role re-balancing, (b) collaboration management, and (c) principle erosion and regeneration. In a context of fast technology evolution, the most significant challenge of AI-gile seems to be related to the rising trade-off between the capability to fully exploit the increasing AI potentialities and the preservation of the human-centric nature of the Agile philosophy.