The standard for project management

  

Appendix X2

---

��

125

APPENDIX X3   

AGILE SUITABILITY FILTER TOOLS

X3.1 INTRODUCTION

Agile literature contains many agile suitability filter tools to help assess under what circumstances an agile approach 

is appropriate to use. In 1994, the Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM) developed an Agile Project Suitability 

Questionnaire and an Organizational Suitability Questionnaire to help gauge likely fit and potential problem areas.

The Crystal family of approaches also employed suitability criteria, ranking projects by team size and the criticality 

of the product or service being developed. Crystal recommends that smaller, less critical projects be undertaken with 

lighter controls and simpler approaches. Large, mission or life critical projects were recommended to use more rigor 

and validation.

Since the development of these approaches, there have been many more models created to help determine 

where and when to employ agile approaches. Boehm and Turner adopted some of the elements from DSDM and 

Crystal to develop a popular assessment model to help determine if projects should be undertaken with agile or more 

traditional approaches.

Based on these previous models and expanded to consider the middle ground of hybrid approaches, the following 

model is proposed. It represents a synthesis of several suitability filter attributes to help organizations assess and 

discuss whether projects should be undertaken using predictive, hybrid, or agile approaches.

---

126