The State of Agile Software Development in the Czech Republic: Preliminary Findings Indicate the Dominance of "Abridged" Scrum

This paper presents preliminary results from a survey focused on the state of agile method adoption in the Czech Republic. To this end, an initial survey sample (N = 120) was analyzed. Scrum is the most frequently used agile software development method, reported by 46.7% of respondents as the agile method of choice. However, the results indicate that Scrum seems to be introduced through cherry-picking of those practices that are quite easy to implement. Specifically, the only widely-spread Scrum practice is the maintenance of Product backlog. To the contrary, the teams are rarely cross-functional and the Scrum master role frequently absents. This suggests that in many organizations, Scrum might be invoked due to being a valuable "brand name", rather than due to professionals' subscribing to core Scrum values and assumptions. Our results contribute to the body of empirical knowledge on the state of agile software development initiatives. Our findings confirm the theoretical proposition that in the real world, the implementation of software development methods is often patchy and rarely done "by the book".