An empirical investigation of spikes in agile software development

Abstract

The use of spikes in agile software development (ASD) can enable organizations to produce quality software by employing the required technical expertise, planning the entire development cycle and ensuring that the client's requirements are adhered to. This study aims to examine the use of spikes in ASD. It explores the role, efficiency and efficacy of spikes in various software development domains through the different agile methods. An exploratory research design is adopted to achieve this purpose, whereby mixed methods are used to collect concurrently both qualitative and quantitative data from the experts recruited to the study. Based on the study's findings, this paper shows spikes' impact on risk reduction and their role in the estimation process, as well as how their use is related to the team's understanding and the consistency and reliability of the story estimate. Through interviews, it establishes that the primary role of spikes is risk management through investigations to understand user stories and reveal any uncertainty. Both the efficiency and efficacy of spikes were found to be high. The findings further showed that spikes improve the quality of the end product.

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