The Rise and Evolution of Agile Software Development

Abstract

Agile Software Development has dominated the second half of the past 50 years of Software Engineering. Retrospectives, one of the most common agile practices, enables reflection on past performance, discussion on current progress, and charting forth directions for future improvement. The burgeoning popularity of Agile as the software development model of choice and a significant research sub-domain of software engineering demands a retrospective of its own. In this article, we provide a historical overview of Agiles main focus areas and a holistic synthesis of its trends, their evolution over the past two decades, current status, and forecast from these the likely future of agile software development.