Software Quality - Traditional vs. Agile: an Empirical Investigation

TL;DR

This empirical study investigates how traditional and agile software development processes influence product quality, revealing that agile methods may lead to higher customer satisfaction, especially in larger companies and shorter projects.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence on the correlation between software development processes and quality, focusing on agile versus traditional methodologies.

Findings

Agile processes may result in higher customer satisfaction.

Larger companies and shorter projects tend to produce better quality products.

Architectural styles may not significantly influence software quality.

Abstract

It is well known that the software process impacts the quality of the resulting product. There are also anecdotal claims that agile processes result in higher level of quality than traditional methodologies. However, still solid evidence of this is missing. This work reports in an empirical analysis of the correlation between software process and software quality with specific reference to agile and traditional processes. More than 100 software developers and engineers from 21 countries have been surveyed with an online questionnaire. We have used the percentage of satisfied customers estimated by the software developers and engineers as the main dependent variable. The results evidence some interesting patterns: architectural styles may not have a significant influence on quality, agile methodologies might result in happier customers, larger companies and shorter projects seems to produce better products.