Understanding Conflicts in Agile Adoption through Technological Frames

Abstract

In this paper, adoption of a new software development method is viewed as socio-technical innovation and change; a framework based on Bijker’s Technological Frames (TF) is developed and used to model this innovation and change. To illustrate this process findings from one case study of a large organization adopting the agile software development method are presented. Qualitative data were collected from observations, interviews, and documents and analysed using TFs. The authors’ findings show that viewing agile adoption as socio-technical innovation and change provides results that resonate with existing research in the area and extends it. The key contribution of this case study to the socio-technical literature on systems development is a practical demonstration of how TFs can be used to facilitate the socio-technical understanding and identification of conflicts between stakeholder groups while going through the adoption of a new software development method.