Control portfolio adaptation in scrum: Initial findings from a practitioner survey

Software development processes are defined by control practices such as daily stand-ups or burndown charts. Although previous research has thoroughly investigated the antecedents of control selection and the consequences of control enactment, there is a lack of research into the dynamic changes that are made to a control portfolio throughout a project's life cycle. In preparation for a large, future field study, we conducted (i) a literature review to create a list of practices that are common in Scrum pro-jects and (ii) a survey with selected interviews of 16 Scrum practitioners. Our goals are to investigate whether these agile control practices are used, and if so, how intensively, and whether their use changes over a project's life cycle (i.e., whether they are used throughout the entire project, and added or removed during the project). We find initial evidence for elements in the project environment, project outcomes, and experiences with control mechanisms to be main triggers of change to a control portfolio. Further, we identify different modes of adaptations (e.g., control portfolio adaptation vs practice modification). Based on these findings we propose a research model and an outline for our future longitudinal field study.