People over process: the implications of agile for IS skills and human resource management

Agile approaches to information systems development have become increasingly popular in recent years, as more and more IS organisations are eager to capitalise on the alleged opportunities and benefits they provide. However, transition to these approaches is often far from trivial, and can be extremely problematic. Our study of 20 organisations will focus on the skill gaps caused by the emergence of agile and will identify the top ten key distinctive skills required in an agile environment. Our study will also identify the major strategic human resource challenges and practices to address skill needs and career development in today’s agile environments e.g. recruitment, training and performance evaluation. Particular emphasis will be placed on the distinctive implications of global, and thus distributed, systems development on these challenges. This will be particularly relevant in the coming years as agile approaches cross the chasm from small, co-located project teams to large-scale, multiorganisation, multi-site development across many countries and time zones.