Six Sigma for Agile Teams

Purpose – This paper addresses the most common pain points in agile software development. Methodology/Approach – Many experts agree that agile software development methodologies make good use of best practices – but how can they be measured quantitatively? Agile literature provides surprises for software measurement professionals: for instance, time-consuming size measurement approaches are proposed that produce unreliable and non-reproducible results. However, measurements for agile software development are readily available and less painful than in traditional environments. In this paper a combination of techniques used in Six Sigma for Software – Functional Size Measurement, Six Steps to Completion, and Quality Function Deployment – is presented making agile development processes lean and measurable. We use Six Sigma transfer functions to map development project controls onto process responses. Findings – Agile software development methodologies treat software development as knowledge acquisition by embracing change. They better map reality than traditional approaches do. This facilitates measuring software processes for performance and quality. The findings are valid for all kind of lean software development. Originality – The work originates from workshops at the PROFES 2010 conference in Limerick and the IWSM / MetriKon / Mensura conference in Stuttgart 2010 and has not yet been published in an international journal.