A dependency taxonomy for agile software development projects

Agile software development is designed to achieve collaborative software development. A supporting pillar of collaboration is effective coordination, which is necessary to manage dependencies in projects. Understanding the dependencies arising in agile software development projects can help practitioners choose appropriate coordinative practices from the large number of practices provided by the various agile methods. To achieve this understanding, this article analyses dependencies in three typical cases of co-located agile software development and presents the dependencies as a taxonomy with decision rules for allocating dependencies into categories. Findings show that knowledge, process, and resource dependencies are present, with knowledge dependencies predominant. In addition, there are agile practices with a coordinative function that address multiple dependencies in these agile software development projects. These practices would be a good choice for coordinating a project and supporting collaboration in agile software projects.