Agile methodologies in teams with highly creative and autonomous members
This work tackles the challenge of applying Agile in specialized, creative environments, but it is incremental as it builds on existing Agile practices without introducing a new paradigm.
The paper addresses the tension between Agile principles and rigid Scrum processes, particularly for highly creative and autonomous teams like NASA ADS, by adapting Agile methodologies to balance team satisfaction and stakeholder expectations.
The Agile manifesto encourages us to value individuals and interactions over processes and tools, while Scrum, the most adopted Agile development methodology, is essentially based on roles, events, artifacts, and the rules that bind them together (i.e., processes). Moreover, it is generally proclaimed that whenever a Scrum project does not succeed, the reason is because Scrum was not implemented correctly and not because Scrum may have its own flaws. This grants irrefutability to the methodology, discouraging deviations to fit the actual needs and peculiarities of the developers. In particular, the members of the NASA ADS team are highly creative and autonomous whose motivation can be affected if their freedom is too strongly constrained. We present our experience following Agile principles, reusing certain Scrum elements and seeking the satisfaction of the team members, while rapidly reacting/keeping the project in line with our stakeholders expectations.