The Integrated List of Agile Practices -- A Tertiary Study

TL;DR

This paper synthesizes an integrated, structured list of 38 agile practices from existing literature, helping clarify their usage and aiding both researchers and practitioners in selecting appropriate practices.

Contribution

It presents a comprehensive, categorized list of agile practices derived from a systematic tertiary study, addressing the diversity and misunderstandings in agile practice terminology.

Findings

Identified 38 key agile practices used across studies.

Structured practices into five categories for clarity.

Highlighting the most frequently used practices in literature.

Abstract

Context: Companies adapt agile methods, practices or artifacts for their use in practice since more than two decades. This adaptions result in a wide variety of described agile practices. For instance, the Agile Alliance lists 75 different practices in its Agile Glossary. This situation may lead to misunderstandings, as agile practices with similar names can be interpreted and used differently. Objective: This paper synthesize an integrated list of agile practices, both from primary and secondary sources. Method: We performed a tertiary study to identify existing overviews and lists of agile practices in the literature. We identified 876 studies, of which 37 were included. Results: The results of our paper show that certain agile practices are listed and used more often in existing studies. Our integrated list of agile practices comprises 38 entries structured in five categories. Contribution: The high number of agile practices and thus, the wide variety increased steadily over the past decades due to the adaption of agile methods. Based on our findings, we present a comprehensive overview of agile practices. The research community benefits from our integrated list of agile practices as a potential basis for future research. Also, practitioners benefit from our findings, as the structured overview of agile practices provides the opportunity to select or adapt practices for their specific needs.