A Theory of Software Development Methodologies

In this study, it is proposed that software development methodologies (SDMs), when looked at from the perspective of job design, offers interesting and useful insights. The increasing popularity of agile methods over plan-driven methods in the 2000’s mirror the increasing popularity of non-Taylorist job designs over Taylorist job designs in the 1980’s, when jobs were redesigned by adopting self-managed teams and work groups, and creating employee programs like quality circles with salutary results. This study finds the widely accepted (JCM) Job Characteristic Model (Hackman and Qldham, 1976) for job design relevant in providing a theoretical foundation for the atheoretical domain of SDMs. JCM provides a structural framework for practice to understand what they are doing right and what needs to change by diagnosing the characteristics of the software development processes in need of improvement and making recommendations for tailoring SDMs for superior work outcomes.