Agile Practices and The Promotion of Entrepreneurial Skills in Software Development

Received: 21 January 2017 Revised: 18 January 2018 Accepted: 19 January 2018
DOI: 10.1002/smr.1945
RESEARCH ARTICLE ‐ EMPIRICAL
Agile practices and the promotion of entrepreneurial skills in

software development
Cristiano Tolfo1 | Raul Sidnei Wazlawick2 | Marcelo Gitirana Gomes Ferreira3 |
3
Fernando Antonio Forcellini
1
Federal University of Pampa, Alegrete, Rio
Grande do Sul 97546-550, Brazil Abstract
2
Post‐graduate Program in Computer Science, This article addresses the relationships between agile development and entrepreneurship. The
Federal University of Santa Catarina, objective of the study is to verify that the adoption of agile practices can promote entrepreneurial
Florianópolis, Santa Catarina 88040-900, skills in software developers. In this study, agile practices were related to entrepreneurial skills,
Brazil
3
and developers of the software industry and academia professors were invited to contribute.
Post‐graduate Program in Production
Engineering, Federal University of Santa
Questionnaires were sent to the participants to obtain their opinion regarding this research. Par-
Catarina, Florianópolis, Santa Catarina 88040- ticipants also opined about the possibility of entrepreneurial skills being an observable behavior in
900, Brazil agile culture, ie, if they are visible artifacts of agile culture. As a result, the study found a set of
Correspondence agile practices that promote entrepreneurial skills in software developers. That is, it was found
Cristiano Tolfo, Federal University of Pampa,
that agile practices promote entrepreneurial behavior in these professionals. These entrepreneur-
Campus Alegrete, Av. Tiarajú, 810, Ibirapuitã,
Alegrete, RS 97546‐550, Brasil. ial skills are sustained by the same basic values and assumptions that were learned by developers
Email: ctolfo@gmail.com to resolve internal integration and external adaptation issues during the adoption of agile prac-
tices. In this article, an integration model has been adapted from other areas, thereby opening a
Funding information new field of study involving the relationships between academic research and professional prac-
Brazilian government agency for scientific and
tice on entrepreneurship in the software area and agile development.
technological development
KEY W ORDS
agile culture, agile methods, agile practices, entrepreneurial skills, entrepreneurship
1 | I N T RO D U CT I O N
Since the statement of the Agile Manifesto,1 agile methods are being studied by the scientific community2 and by the software industry, which is
increasingly promoting their use in software projects.3 “The adoption of Agile Software Development in large companies is a recent phenomenon of
great interest both for researchers and practitioners.”4 Software companies seek to adopt agile practices, values, and principles, considering their
own necessities, while the scientific community is researching in cooperation with the industry. One study5 confirms that in the first decade after
the Agile Manifesto, most researches focused on the adoption of agile methods or on the development of agile tools. Other study6 mentions the
generalized adoption of agile methods as an evidence that nowadays software development environments need flexibility and rapid adaptation.
After more than a decade of academic research and many reports on empirical experiences, it was found that the adoption of agile methods
require or promote competent, self‐managed, and motivated teams, as shown by Tolfo and Wazlawick,7 Chow and Cao,8 Dybå and Dingsøyr,9,10
Stankovic et al,11 Hummel,12 and Hoda and Murugesan.13
Works such as those of Li et al,5 McHugh et al,14 and Stray15 suggest that agile methods are a way to improve interpersonal skills in software
developers: skills such as “flexibility,” “creative thinking,” “communication,” and “team work.” Those interpersonal skills are similar to those sug-
gested to be necessary for entrepreneurs to succeed in their businesses by authors such as Lezana and Tonelli,16 Hisrich and Peters,17 and
Shekarey and Arany.18
Taking that context into consideration, this work intends to verify whether practice with agile methods also fosters the development of entre-
preneurial skills. This work presents and studies the hypothesis that agile practices adoption promotes entrepreneurial skills in software developers.
This paper presents new developments over the studies of Tolfo.19
J Softw Evol Proc. 2018;e1945. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/smr Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 1 of 23
https://doi.org/10.1002/smr.1945
2 of 23 TOLFO ET AL.
To analyze that hypothesis and answer the research question, a set of relationships between agile practices and entrepreneurial skills is cre-
ated. Opinions about these relationships were collected and analyzed from software engineering professors from the academia and from devel-
opers at the software industry.
These relationships are analyzed under the perspective of the agile culture representation model presented by Tolfo et al.20 By using that per-
spective, it is argued that adopted agile practices and the entrepreneurial skills fostered by them are conditioned by shared basic values and
assumptions that the team develops for resolving internal integration and external adaptation issues during adoption of agile methods considering
the context of their organization.
These relationships lead to one of the contributions of this work that is the adaptation of the model proposed by Kuura et al21 that in this paper
was adapted to show that there is a set of relationships to be explored between the research field and the practice areas of software entrepreneur-
ship and agile development. This model opens a new research front on the relationships between entrepreneurship areas and agile software devel-
opment, which may contribute to the respective academic research and professional practice areas.
Section 2 of this paper presents the theoretical framework used in this study. Section 3 presents the methodological procedures adopted and
discusses the context of the research and the profile of the sample, as well as the data collection and analysis. Section 4 presents the results
obtained. Sections 5 and 6 present and discuss the results. Section 7 presents limitations and potential threats to the validity of this work. Section
8 presents the contributions of this paper and future works. Finally, Section 9 presents the conclusions.
2 | T HE O R E T I C A L F R A M E W O R K
This section presents a set of entrepreneurial skills as described in the literature. It additionally presents a model for representing agile culture.
2.1 | Entrepreneurial skills

The study of Jones and George22 defines an entrepreneur as an individual that sees opportunities and decides how to use the necessary resources
to produce new and better goods and services. Some works such as Hisrich and Peters,17 Jones and George,22 and Schumpeter23 mention that
besides entrepreneurs that create new companies, there are also internal entrepreneurs that create innovation, working as employees of
established companies.
Entrepreneurship usually requires a set of competences based on attitude and skills. The work of Lezana and Tonelli16 insists that entrepre-
neurial skills are necessary for the success of a company. Additionally, Hisrich and Peters17 identify a set of skills that are needed for an entrepre-
neur and classify them into 3 groups: technical, managerial, and entrepreneurial. However, Shekarey and Arany18 categorize the entrepreneurial
skills into technical, personal, and managing entrepreneurial. Those skills are presented in Table 1.
As it can be seen in Table 1, the description of the entrepreneurial skills among the authors is convergent. Furthermore, the complementation
between technical and human skills may be noticed. For example, innovation requires changes that involve taking risks and leadership in order to
make it happen; however, technical knowledge is also necessary. The study presented in this article refers to the entrepreneurial skills classified by
Lezana and Tonelli,16 which are described below:
• “Identification of new opportunities”: capacity to think innovatively and creatively to identify new products, define markets, and incorporate
new technologies.
TABLE 1 Entrepreneurial skills. Adapted from Lezana and Tonelli,16 Hisrich and Peters,17 and Shekarey and Arany18
References Entrepreneurial Skills Managerial Skills Technical Skills

16
Lezana & Tonelli Identification of new opportunities, Knowledge to undertake: earlier experience Knowledge to undertake: knowledge
valuation of opportunities and in companies, understanding of company's of the product marketed, product
creative thinking, persuasive sectors and functions, experience in the design and quality, manufacturing
communication, negotiation, commerce area, marketing, distribution, mode and other business‐related
information acquisition, problem global vision, complementary training, technical aspects.
solving. experiences with new situations.
Hisrich & Peters17 Knowledge about business, skill to Planning, decision taking, marketing, Writing, technology, attention,
assume calculated risks, innovation finances, production, and control. oratory, organization, training,
spirit, persistence, visionary managerial style, team working,
leadership, determination and and technical knowhow.
change orientation, internal control,
and discipline.
Shekarey & Arany18 Skills such as internal control and Skills like planning and goal determination, The same as those proposed by
regularity, risk assumption, decision taking, human relationships Hisrich & Peters.17
innovation, skill to take main marketing, initial business, financial and
changes and reforms, orientation accounting skills, management, control,
to change, emphasis, tolerance, negotiation, and development of
and persistence. entrepreneurship skills.
TOLFO ET AL. 3 of 23
• “Valuation of opportunities and creative thinking”: capacity to perform a critical evaluation of opportunities, distinguishing a real opportunity
from a false one.
• “Persuasive communication”: capacity to persuade and mobilize using different modes of communication
• “Negotiation”: capacity to negotiate products and services.
• “Information acquisition”: capacity to search for information about the segment, customer needs, and the market.
• “Problem solving”: capacity to innovate by creating new products, technologies, or new organizational forms; capacity to adapt and find
solutions.
Lezana and Tonelli16 claim that this is a non‐exhaustive set of entrepreneurial skills, and these skills are an example of classification commonly
used by authors of the entrepreneurship area, which does not exhaust the subject in any way.
In the context of software engineering, Capretz and Ahmed,24 Rivera‐Ibarra et al,25 Espinosa‐Curiel et al,26 and Holtkamp et al27 are some of
the studies that analyzed important technical and human skills for professional practice in the field of software development. The study of Raffa
and Zollo28 related entrepreneurial skills with the innovative capacity of small software companies, while Crawford et al29 emphasize the entrepre-
neurial skills in a study about incorporating an entrepreneurship concentration into the undergraduate information technology curriculum. Addi-
tionally, El‐Khalili,30 Read et al,31 and Zaina and Álvaro32 mention entrepreneurial skills in software engineering.
2.2 | Model for representing agile culture

On the basis of the theory of organizational culture levels proposed by Schein,33 Tolfo et al20 presents a model for agile culture in which agile prac-
tices may be understood as a manifestation of the culture of a software development company or a team that adopts agile methods. In Figure 1,
agile practices may be interpreted as visible artifacts of the agile culture; a number of shared values sustain those practices. Such values are based
on a set of basic assumptions shared by the software development company or the team.
At the first level of organizational culture, observable artifacts are not limited to the architecture of the physical environment and other tan-
gible objects, as they are also important artifacts related to climate and organizational behavior.33 In this way, democratic work environments in
which software developers adopt agile, self‐organized, proactive, and adaptive practices can be seen as visible artifacts of the agile culture.20
In the second level of organizational culture, the values assumed by the group give meaning and sustain the visible artifacts.33 In this sense, the
values assumed by software teams happen to support the use of agile practices and give significance to the visible artifacts of the agile culture.20
In the third level of organizational culture, according to Schein,33 the shared basic assumptions result from experiences that where learnt and
shared in such a way that they eventually determine the organization's behavior. In the agile culture model proposed by Tolfo et al,20 the shared
FIGURE 1 Agile culture iceberg. Adapted from Tolfo et al20

basic assumptions that are similar to the agile principles declared at the Agile Manifesto may sustain a number of agile values that foster the adop-
tion of agile practices.
Even that the 3 levels described in Figure 1 are present in different software companies, it can be noticed that the agile culture is unique in
each organization or team. That happens because the agile culture is formed by experiences lived in order to solve issues related to internal inte-
gration and external adaptation in the context of each company.
The “internal integration” issues in a software team may be, for example, the way software developers resolve personal or technical knowledge
differences in order to adapt and develop the capacity to practice “pair programming” and “short daily meetings.” Thus, it is possible to presume
that both skills adaptation and development are related to values sustained by shared basic assumptions.
Additionally, issues associated to the company's “external adaptation” may be related to values sustained by basic assumptions that are specific
to the company's market, the kind of software it develops, its competitors, and even the external adaptation of the software development team to
the other departments of the company, such as marketing or businesses.
3 | METHODOLOGICAL PROCEDURES
This section presents the methodological procedures used to evaluate the hypothesis that entrepreneurial skills in software developers are fostered
due to the adoption of agile practices.
3.1 | Research context and sample profile

To verify whether the promotion of entrepreneurial skills happens with the adoption of agile methods, a set of entrepreneurial skills commonly
used by authors of the entrepreneurship area was identified in literature.16 These skills were related to the agile practices proposed by the Extreme
Programming34 and Scrum35 models.
To validate the research hypothesis, it was initially considered the possibility of conducting workshops and case studies involving members of
the academy and industry. However, faced with the difficulty of gathering the target audience and the need to design mechanisms that avoid a
possible bias of the research arising from the interaction between the participants, it was chosen to apply questionnaires to be answered
anonymously.
A pretest was prepared with an initial version of the questionnaire applied, and it was answered by the 4 authors of the article and also by 7
members of a software development organization. The pretest served to identify the need to make the questionnaire less extensive and to perform
certain adjustments on some issues.
A questionnaire was drawn up including the relationships between agile practices and entrepreneurial skills. This questionnaire (in Portuguese
language) was sent to software engineering professors and professional software developers aiming to learn their respective opinions regarding the
possibility of agile practices promoting entrepreneurial skills.
The results obtained with the application of the questionnaire were tabulated and presented (Section 4). The analysis and discussion of the
results led to a set of agile practices that promote entrepreneurial skills (Section 5) and to the representation of entrepreneurial skills as visible arti-
facts of agile culture (Section 6). After the survey was conducted, potential limitations and possible threats to the validity of the work were analyzed
(Section 7). Contributions of this paper are presented along with a new field of study involving interrelations between research and practice in soft-
ware entrepreneurship and agile development (Section 8).
Regarding the sampling profile adopted in this survey, it was defined that the respondents should be agile experts and practitioners in order to
opine about the possibility of such practices promoting entrepreneurial skills. It was also defined that these participants should be professional soft-
ware developers with practical experience in the software industry and professors with academic teaching and researching experience on software
engineering.
Instead of performing a random survey with a larger number of participants, it was decided to use a sample consisting of a reduced number of
respondents, which were selected by their high profile and invited to anonymously answer the questionnaire. Therefore, this research uses “con-
venience sampling” and not probabilistic sampling.36 It is worth noting that Ahmad et al,37 Alahyari et al,38 Baum et al,39 Crabtree et al,40 Garousi
et al,41 Graziotin et al,42 Petersen et al,43 and Verner et al44 are some of the works who have used convenience sampling in research in the software
development area.
The fact that software developers with experience in agile practices were selected may have produced a risk of bias in the research, since part
of them could be agile development enthusiasts. On the other hand, the experience with agile practices should allow developers to respond to the
questionnaire with more assurance and coherence. Similarly, the experience in teaching and researching software engineering should allow profes-
sors to answer the questionnaire in a more reflective and criticist manner, thereby avoiding a biased agile enthusiasm.
Using 2 diverse sources of data (academia and industry) is also a way to mitigate the possibility of having a research bias in the answers. By
presenting “triangulation” as an approach that can be applied to increase the validity of software engineering research45 states that data collection
from diverse sources can help finding contradictions.
Having been decided that the questionnaires would be sent to academia and industry, the survey participants were chosen. It was sent to each
participant an email containing the invitation to collaborate and a link to the online questionnaire.
Some professionals were chosen after a search in a business social network. The searched profile included professionals working, giving train-
ing, and consultancy about agile development for software companies. The other invitees were pairs of the authors of this article known for being
agile specialists.
As for software engineering professors invited, some were chosen by looking at the program committees of the editions from 2012 to 2016
the main Brazilian conference on agile methods. After a first list was created, the online curriculum of each one was checked to confirm teaching
and researching in software engineering. The other invitees were pairs of the authors known to teach and research software engineering.
Eighty e‐mail messages have been sent with a link to respond to the questionnaire online. The questionnaire aimed at the software industry
professionals was sent to 43 professional software developers of 29 organizations running in Brazil.
The questionnaire aimed at the academia was sent to 37 software engineering professors of 16 Brazilian universities with high education in
computing (computer science, information systems, and software engineering).
As shown in Figure 2, of the 80 email messages containing the questionnaire link to be answered, 30 were aimed for professors from 12 public
universities, and 7 were for professors from 4 private universities. In addition, it can be noticed that 22 messages were for professionals working in
public organizations and 21 were for professionals who work in private organizations. The information in Figure 2 helps to define the profile and
the size of the sampling used in the search.
The emails were sent directly to the professors and professionals, as it is not part of the objective of this research to analyze the profile of the
industry and the academy. As a result, the universities and organizations in which professors and professionals work have not been contacted or
analyzed.
It is worth mentioning that part of the invited professionals from the industry mentioned to have passed invitations to some colleagues. There-
fore, it is estimated that more than 43 professional software developers received the invitation.
3.2 | Data collection and analysis

Two versions of the questionnaire were created: one to be applied to developers of the software industry and other to be applied to professors at
the academia.
The version of the questionnaire applied at the academia was composed by 8 questions (Q1 to Q8), while the version of the questionnaire
applied at the industry has 9 questions (Q1 to Q9). In Section 4, the questions and the replies obtained are presented.
In both versions, respondents had to inform their training (Q1), their professional experience (Q2), and their knowledge about agile software
development practices (Q3). Based on the search sample profile specified in section 3.1, Q1, Q2, and Q3 aim to collect information from the
respondents to verify whether they match the desired profile.
Q1 and Q3 kept the same text in both versions of the questionnaire. Q2 has a variation because in the version of the questionnaire prepared
for application at the industry, respondents are asked to inform their professional experience in software development. On the other hand, Q2 in
the version elaborated for application at the academia, it is asked the experience in teaching and researching software engineering. The results
obtained from Q1 are presented in Figure 3, while the results obtained from Q2 may be seen in Figure 4, and those obtained from Q3 in
Figure 5.
Q4, Q5, Q6, and Q7 were the same in the 2 versions of the questionnaire. These questions aimed to obtain the opinion of respondents about
agile practices promoting or not entrepreneurial skills.
In those questions, 20 agile practices were related to 6 entrepreneurial skills, producing 120 relationships, which were object of analysis by the
respondents of the survey.
With the intention of improving usability and easing the completion of the questionnaire, rather than condensing the 120 relationships in a
single question, they were distributed in 4 questions: Q4 to Q7. These 4 questions were evaluated using the median of the values assigned by
the respondents. The results of these relationships are presented in Table 2.
FIGURE 2 Data that assist in defining the

sampling size and profile
FIGURE 3 Survey respondents training
FIGURE 4 Professional experience of survey

respondents
FIGURE 5 Survey respondents' knowledge

about agile practices
Q8 asked the respondents opinion about the possibility of entrepreneurial skills to be seen as visible artifacts of an agile culture. A 5‐point
Likert scale was used, with 1 meaning a strong disagreement and 5 meaning a strong agreement with a statement. The results obtained from
Q8 may be observed in Figure 6.
To the version of the questionnaire sent to the professional software developers, a ninth question (Q9) was added, in which it was asked to be
informed the thread for which the respondent has been developing software. Q9 aims to contribute to the characterization of the sampling profile.
Because of this, the questionnaire applied at the software industry was composed by 9 questions, while the questionnaire version applied at the
academia was composed by only 8 questions. The results obtained from Q9 can be seen in Figure 6.
4 | RESULTS AND ANALYSIS
This section presents and discusses the answers to the questionnaires. From the 39 survey respondents, 24 were developers of the software indus-
try and 15 professors at the academia. The answers obtained from the application of the questionnaire are available to the public.46
TABLE 2 Survey for assessing the relationship between entrepreneurial skills and agile practices
Problem Information a Identification of New Valuation of Opportunities Persuasive
Solving Acquisition Negotiation Opportunities and Creative Thinking Communication
Agile Practice × Entrepreneurial Skill A I A I A I A I A I A I
Onsite customer 4,0 4,0 5,0 5,0 5,0 5,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0
Sprint planning meeting 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,5 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0
Planning game/weekly interactions 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0
and meetings
Pair programming 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0
Short daily meetings 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0
Sprint review meeting 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0
Sprint retrospective 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 3,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0
Metaphors/client language 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 3,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0
Open office space 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 3,0 4,0 4,0 4,0
Sprints/project delivery cycles 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 3,0 4,0 3,0 4,0
Open/negotiable scope contract 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 3,0 4,0 3,0 4,0
Frequent small releases 3,5 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 3,0 4,0 3,0 4,0 3,0 4,0
Simple design/solutions 4,0 4,0 3,0 4,0 3,0 4,0 3,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 3,0 4,0
Product/sprint backlog 3,0 4,0 3,0 3,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 4,0 3,0 4,0
Continuous integration 4,0 4,0 3,0 4,0 3,0 4,0 3,0 4,0 3,0 4,0 3,0 4,0
Product/sprint burndown chart 3,0 4,0 3,5 3,5 3,0 3,5 3,0 3,0 3,0 3,0 3,0 4,0
Test driven development 3,0 4,0 3,0 3,0 3,0 3,0 3,0 3,5 3,0 4,0 3,0 3,0
Refactoring 4,0 4,0 3,0 3,0 3,0 3,0 3,0 3,0 3,0 3,0 3,0 3,0
Sustainable pace/40 hr week 3,0 4,0 3,0 3,0 3,0 3,0 3,0 3,0 3,0 3,0 3,0 3,0
Coding standard 3,0 3,0 3,0 3,0 3,0 3,0 3,0 3,0 3,0 3,0 3,0 3,0
FIGURE 6 Opinion about entrepreneurial

skills being visible artifacts of agile culture
In Q1, respondents informed their training. Q1 has the same text for the 2 versions of the questionnaire:
Q1. Specify your training.
Results are presented in Figure 3 below.

It can be observed in Figure 3 that the sampling profile is characterized by the training level of the respondents. At the academia, most of them
have a doctorate degree. In the industry, more than half of them have informed that they have additional training at the level of specialization or
masters.
In Q2, professors informed their experience in teaching and researching software engineering, and software professionals informed their expe-
rience in industry. For academia, Q2 has the following text:
Q2. Inform your academic experience (teaching and research) in software engineering.
For industry, Q2 has the following text:

Q2. Inform your experience in the field of software development.
Results obtained from Q2 are depicted in Figure 4.

Results shown in Figure 4 indicate that the professional experience of the survey respondents meets the sampling profile previously defined
(section 3.1). All Academia respondents are professors with experience in teaching and research in software engineering. Similarly, all industry
respondents are professional software developers with considerable experience in the software industry.
In Q3, survey respondents informed their knowledge about agile practices. In both versions of the questionnaire, Q3 has the following text:
Q3. Indicate your knowledge about agile software development practices.
Results obtained from Q3 are depicted in Figure 5.

Results displayed in Figure 5 indicate that the knowledge of the survey respondents on agile practices meets the sampling profile previously
defined.
In Figure 5, it can be noticed that, at the academia, most professors claimed to have at least “reasonable knowledge,” with a significant number
of professors with “excellent knowledge about agile practices.”
As shown in Figure 5, most industry respondents considered to have good knowledge about agile practices. It can be noticed that one of the
respondents of the industry (respondent 8) claimed to have superficial knowledge about agile practices. On the other hand, on Q2, the same
respondent indicated to “up to 10 years of experience” with software development. As a result of this practical experience with the software devel-
opment, the opinion of this respondent was maintained in the research.
Q4, Q5, Q6, and Q7 aimed to verify whether the adoption of agile practices promotes entrepreneurial skills. In both versions of the question-
naire, the questions have the same text, which is the following:
Q4, Q5, Q6, and Q7. Give your opinion about whether the following agile practices (rows) promote entrepreneurial skills (columns).
Each one of those questions was complemented by the following text:

For example, if you select “4, promotes,” in line X and column Y, it is because you understand that the practice X promotes the skill X; if you select “2,
inhibits,” in line X and column Y, it is because you understand that the practice X inhibits the skill Y.
In Q4, Q5, Q6, and Q7, each relationship was evaluated with a scale with the following meanings: 1, strongly inhibits; 2, inhibits; 3, does not
inhibit nor promotes; 4, promotes; 5, promotes heavily.
Based on the Q4, Q5, Q6, and Q7, it was created an evaluation instrument containing the relationships between agile practices and entrepre-
neurial skills. In this instrument, 6 entrepreneurial skills were related to 20 agile practices, resulting in 100 and 20 different relationships. Table 2
presents the median for each relationship between entrepreneurial skills and agile practices. Values in columns labeled with A refer to the median of
the opinion of the academia for each of the relationships, while values in columns labeled with I refer to the median of the opinion of the industry
professionals.
In Table 2, it can be seen that there is no significative difference between medians obtained from academia and industry. The strongest
relationships appear in the upper rows of the table and the weakest in its lower rows. In a general way, we realize that identification of new
opportunities, “negotiation,” and “information acquisition” are the entrepreneurial skills more influenced by the agile practice “onsite customer,”
and that “onsite customer,” “sprint planning meeting,” “planning game/weekly interactions and meetings,” “pair programming,” “short daily meet-
ings,” “sprint review meeting,” and “sprint retrospective” appear among the agile practices that most promote entrepreneurial skills in software
developers.
It can be said that there was congruence between the opinions of academia and industry given the percentage of convergent opinions (opin-
ions convergence in 73% of the answers obtained). The results also show that none of the agile practices seem to inhibit the analyzed entrepre-
neurial skills.
The greatest disagreement can be observed at the range that goes from the row that contains the agile practice “open/negotiable scope con-
tract” to the row that contains “product/sprint burndown chart.” By analyzing this interval, it may be understood that the opinion of the industry
ended up being more favorable than the opinion of the academia.
Agile practices that were less pointed out as promoters of entrepreneurial skills are those contained in the last 5 rows of Table 2. Those are the
practices “product/sprint burndown chart,” “test driven development,” “refactoring,” “sustainable pace/40 hour week,” and “coding standard.”
Answers obtained in Q4, Q5, Q6, and Q7 produced 2 criticisms about the way in which the relationships between agile practices and entre-
preneurial skills were arranged. The criticisms came from respondents from the academia perspective. When answering Q5, survey respondent 1
commented, “I think that in all my answers to the two questions above I would say: ‘can promote’ instead of ‘promotes’ ….” Also, when responding
to Q5, respondent 15 commented, “I did not like the item ‘does not inhibit nor promotes’, I rather ‘neutral’ because sometimes an item may both
inhibit and promote something at the same time.”
Q8 was conceived to verify the possibility of considering the entrepreneurial skills as visible artifacts of an agile culture. It was asked if, in an
agile culture, when software developers are observed acting with an entrepreneurial posture, these behaviors, attitudes, and practices can be
interpreted as visible artifacts of agile culture.
The text of Q8 was the following:
Q8. For Edgar Schein (creator of the theory of organizational culture levels), behaviors, attitudes, and observable practices in the workplace are called
“visible artifacts” of the company's culture. Considering this, opine on the following assertion: “Entrepreneurial skills are visible artifacts of an agile
software development culture.”
Q8 is the only one that has an exception, because in the perspective of the software industry, respondent 23 ignored it. As a result, Q8
obtained only 23 answers from the 24 respondents.
To evaluate the responses obtained for Q8, the 5‐point Likert scale was used, with 1 indicating a strong disagreement and 5 indicating a strong
agreement with a statement. The results obtained are presented in Figure 6.
As seen in Figure 6, most respondents agree that entrepreneurship skills can be interpreted as visible artifacts of an agile culture.
In Q8, software developer 1, when choosing the option “3, neither agree nor disagree,” complemented with the following statement:
In part, despite all the agile knowledge that exists, developers are human and absorb only what suits them most. For some (great
developers by the way), to have the most perfect code is enough, which contradicts the Agile manifesto itself. If people sincerely read
the manifest and understand what is behind it, my answer to this question would be ‘strongly agree’.
According to the responses obtained for Q8, most from the industry and academia agree that entrepreneurial skills can be regarded as visible
artifacts of agile culture. This allows the representation of the skills as visible artifacts of agile culture as illustrated in Figure 8.
In Q9 (only available in the version of the questionnaire aimed at software developers), respondents informed the thread for which they pre-
dominantly develop software.
The text of Q9 was the following:
Q9. Which is the thread for which you predominantly develop software.
The threads proposed are displayed in Figure 7.
Results obtained from Q9 contribute to the characterization of the sampling profile used in the research. As noted in Figure 7, most of the
respondents stated that they predominantly develop software for the government. One of the respondents (respondent 8) reported that he or
she develops software for an area not listed. The informed area is “private welfare.”
5 | A G I L E P R A C T I C E S T H A T P RO M O T E E N T R E P R E N E U R I A L S K I L LS
The opinion of industry and academia expressed in the answers for Q4, Q5, Q6, and Q7 confirms the hypothesis that agile practices promote entre-
preneurial skills in software developers.
This confirmation can be observed in Table 2, which contains the median of the opinions pertaining to each of the relationships between agile
practices and entrepreneurial skills of Q4, Q5, Q6, and Q7.
Thus, the following sections refer only to the consensual opinions between academia and industry. That is, Table 2 only includes agile practices
for which the medians of the responses of both industry and academia are equal to or greater than 4 (positively). Further, discussions and refer-
ences from the literature about agile are also presented.
In this way, the agile practices that promote each of the entrepreneurial skills studied (median equal to or greater than 4) are identified.
5.1 | Agile practices that promote the entrepreneurial skill “identification of new opportunities”
As it can be seen in Table 2, industry and academia confirm that agile practices promote the entrepreneurial skill “identification of new opportuni-
ties.” Agile practices related positively to this entrepreneurial skill were the following: “onsite customer,” “sprint planning meeting,” “planning game/
weekly interactions and meetings,” “pair programming,” “short daily meetings,” “sprint review meeting,” “sprint retrospective,” “metaphors/client
language,” “open office space,” “sprints/project delivery cycles,” “open/negotiable scope contract,” and “product/sprint backlog.”
Figures displayed in Table 2 show convergence and divergence between the opinions of industry and academia. The academia and industry
differed about agile practices “frequent small releases,” “simple design/solutions,” and “continuous integration” promoting the entrepreneurial skill
“identification of new opportunities.”
FIGURE 7 Threads for which respondents

predominantly develop software
In Table 2, it can be noticed that the agile practice “continuous integration,” in the opinion of the industry, has all its relationships with entre-
preneurial skills with median 4.0, indicating that this agile practice promotes the 6 entrepreneurship skills studied. However, from the opinion of
“continuous integration,” academia presented median 3.0 in almost all relationships, informing in 5 of the 6 relationships, that this agile practice
does not inhibit nor promotes entrepreneurial skills.
In a research on trends in software development practice, Dingsyr and Lassenius47 also identified convergences and divergences between the
interests of practitioners and researchers. One of the differences found in the research conducted by Dingsyr and Lassenius47 was the discrepancy
between the industry and academia interest about the agile practice “continuous integration.” The results obtained by Dingsyr and Lassenius47 indi-
cated an expressive interest of the practitioners for the agile practice “continuous integration.” On the other hand, researchers shown less interest
about this practice.
Dingsyr and Lassenius47 mention that the agile practice “continuous integration” is the basis for the company to adopt the practice of contin-
uous delivery. According to that research, these practices emerge and are important to industry, so that their applicability and relevance is more
perceived in this context than by the academia. However, it cannot be concluded if this was also the reason for the divergence between industry
and academic opinion verified in Table 2.
Mentioning “continuous planning” as an important aspect of agile and lean development, Suomalainen et al48 remark that companies are usu-
ally influenced by internal and external changes. Authors cite as an example of a factor that generates internal change the predisposition of the
manager to improve the decision‐making process. The need to adopt lean and agile is cited by Suomalainen et al48 as a factor that generates exter-
nal change, because this need has caused many companies to develop software in an interactive and incremental way.
According to Suomalainen et al,48 continuous planning makes the company develop the skill to adapt its strategies to the customer and market
needs and to the execution and identification of new opportunities. In this way, it is understood that the continuous planning involved in agile
development also promotes the entrepreneurial skill “identification of new opportunities.”
The study concludes that internal and external changes are motivating for continuous planning, as they relate to internal and external chal-
lenges that companies face in current volatile market environments.
From the perspective of agile culture, these internal and external changes mentioned by Suomalainen et al48 relate to experiences with internal
integration and external adaptation issues experienced by the agile team. These experiences end up defining the basic assumptions and shared
values that form the agile culture and provide meaning to the visible artifacts in the organizational environment.
Thus, these internal changes involve the experiences that define the basic shared assumptions on how internal integration should occur. On
the other hand, external changes relate to experiences that define shared basic assumptions about how external adaptation should occur.
Then, in the view of agile culture, the entrepreneurial skill “identification of new opportunities” turns out to be also a visible artifact, because it
is possible to view software developers with an entrepreneurial posture, watchful to the market opportunities and thinking about new possibilities
of products and services, and being aware of the new market opportunities.
5.2 | Agile practices that promote the entrepreneurial skill “valuation of opportunities and creative thinking”
From the results obtained in Table 2, industry and academia affirm that agile practices promote the entrepreneurial skill “valuation of opportunities
and creative thinking.” The results indicate that agile practices that promote this entrepreneurial skill are “onsite customer,” “sprint planning meet-
ing,” “planning game/weekly interactions and meetings,” “pair programming,” “short daily meetings,” “sprint review meeting,” “sprint retrospective,”
“metaphors/client language,” “simple design/solutions,” and “product/sprint backlog.”
The statement of survey respondents that the agile practice “sprint review meeting” promotes in some degree the entrepreneurial skill “valu-
ation of opportunities and creative thinking” agrees with the recommendations of Cohn.49 According to him, it is recommended that at the end of a
sprint, the team takes part at a review meeting where the team as a whole learns based on the following questions:
Much of the learning will be about the product: What do users like? What do they dislike? What do they find confusing? What do they want
next? What features does the new increment help them think of that they had not thought of before? But perhaps an equal part of the learning will
be about the team's use of Scrum itself: how much work can we do in a sprint? What gets in our way? What could help us go faster? Are we
achieving “done” software every sprint?49
Thus, it is possible to presume that in an agile culture, the development team that participate at sprint review meetings addressing issues similar
to those proposed by Cohn49 is creating a set of shared assumptions that involves issues of internal integration and external adaptation.
It is worth to stress that improving the skill “valuation of opportunities and creative thinking” do not turn people into experts about market neither
entrepreneurs prepared to manage a business. There may have different interpretations on how to relate agile practices with entrepreneurial skills.
The principles of Lean Startup50 state that entrepreneurs are everywhere and that entrepreneurship is management. Under the view of the
first principle, software developers working for an organization have potential and may become entrepreneurs. But under the view of the second
principle, the identification of a business opportunity in software imposes challenges and uncertainties that are not restricted to software devel-
opment, because this involves also business evolution and management.
As can be observed in Table 2, there was disagreement between industry and academia's opinion on the possibility of the agile practices “open
workspace,” “sprints/project delivery cycles,” and “frequent small releases” promoting the entrepreneurial skill “opportunities valuation and creative
thinking.”
Another issue observed is that the survey respondents from industry considered that “sprints/project delivery cycles” promote the entre-
preneurial skill of valuation of opportunities and creative thinking. On the other hand, the survey respondents from academia considered
that “sprints/project delivery cycles” do not inhibit nor promote the entrepreneurial skill of “valuation of opportunities and creative thinking”
(according to Table 2).
The lack of consensus about the agile practice “sprints/project delivery cycles” and “frequent small releases” promoting the entrepreneurial skill
of “valuation of opportunities and creative thinking” may be investigated from studies such as Maiden et al51 and Conboy and Morgan.52 Maiden
et al51 mention that short iterations may be challenges to the promotion of creative thinking, because it needs incubation and reflecting time that
may not be available during short term sprints. Additionally, Conboy and Morgan52 state that the practices of short iterations, onsite customer, and
short daily meetings could limit the time for software developers to share ideas outside the team.
5.3 | Agile practices that promote the entrepreneurial skill “persuasive communication”
In Table 2, industry and academia indicate which agile practices promote the entrepreneurial skill “persuasive communication.” Those are “onsite
customer,” “sprint planning meeting,” “planning game/weekly interactions and meetings,” “pair programming,” “short daily meetings,” “sprint review
meeting,” “sprint retrospective,” “metaphors/client language,” and “open office space.”
Pikkarainen et al53 have verified that the use of agile practices can improve or hinder the communication between those involved in the soft-
ware project. The authors consider agile practices “short daily meetings,” “sprint planning,” and “open office space” as facilitators for the internal
communication of agile teams.
In literature, one study49 have observed that short daily meetings are a good way for maintaining the team aware about the status of the pro-
ject. On the other hand, one of the obstacles to communication identified in the same study is the fact that short daily meetings do not provide
enough information for testers and, on the other hand, they may appear to be too long for external customers.
The survey respondents agreed that the agile practice “onsite customer” promotes the entrepreneurial skill “persuasive communication.” In the
literature, Hoda et al54-57 highlight the importance of customer collaboration in agile development and describe strategies to override obstacles
created when the practice “onsite customer” does not happen as expected. In one of the cases reported by them, the strategy adopted was to make
software demonstrations for the customer that has little time available to participate at the project. By adopting this strategy, the team possibly
experiences alternatives to communicate more effectively.
It is possible to see that in cases such as the one presented by Hoda et al,56 the teams deal with external adaptation and internal integration
issues in order to be able to adjust agile methods to the reality of their projects.
Thus, the obstacles found may be important learning instruments, and cases in which an agile practice could not be adopted as idealized induce
the creation of alternatives to solve the problem. The creation of alternatives produces learning that, as time passes, starts to form the shared basic
assumptions about internal integration and external adaptation in software projects.
As can be verified in Table 2, the opinions of industry and academia differed about agile practices “sprints/project delivery cycles,” “open/nego-
tiable scope contract,” “frequent small releases,” “simple design/solutions,” “product/sprint backlog,” “continuous integration,” and “product/sprint
burndown” promoting the entrepreneurial skill “persuasive communication.”
5.4 | Agile practices that promote the entrepreneurial skill “negotiation”

Industry and academia have pointed out what agile practices are promoting the entrepreneurial skill “negotiation.” As Table 2 shows, they are the
following: “onsite customer,” “sprint planning meeting,” “planning game/weekly interactions and meetings,” “pair programming,” “short daily meet-
ings,” “sprint review meeting,” “open office space,” “sprints/project delivery cycles,” “open/negotiable scope contract,” “frequent small releases,”
and “product/sprint backlog.”
The skill of negotiation by software developers is more usually based on experiences on defining and deciding about priority of deliv-
eries, as well as deadline estimation. It has to do with experiences that involve internal integration of the team. Based on technical knowl-
edge of each one, relationships are developed, and roles to be performed in negotiation are defined. One study58 affirms that software
developers learn how to negotiate priorities during each interaction, and they also negotiate strategic issues such as deciding to continue
or not a given project.
From the point of view of external adaptation, the experiences with the feedback received from managers and customers during negotiations
happen to define the ways that the team considers proper to conduct negotiations. Another study59 states that high‐performance teams are more
biased to use their potential when involved in a negotiation process; thus, negotiation skills are necessary in order to lead this kind of team.
Studies13,55 state that, in the context of self‐organized agile teams, the elicitation of requirements requires strong communication and
negotiation skills.
Negotiating contracts with open scope and budget is one of the internal integration and external adaptation issues that a software team needs
to develop when adopting agile methods. One study60 says that one way to show the value proposal to the customer with agile contract negoti-
ation with open scope and budget is incorporating in the negotiation classic techniques for return of investment analysis in order to show in the
most effective way that contracts with open scope are appropriate for the project.
Another study54 identified strategies adopted by agile developers for resolving problems related to customers with a negative view of con-
tracts with open scope. From the perspective of agile culture, strategies like that involve the team in learning issues about internal integration
and external adaptation. For example, internal integration is necessary for the team to continue to adopt agile practices even if the customer does
not agree with open scope contracts. As for external adaptation, in this example, it may occur when the team creates negotiation alternatives with
customers resisting to accept open scope contracts.
As it can be verified in Table 2, the opinions of industry and academia differed about agile practices “sprint retrospective,” “simple design/solu-
tions,” and “metaphors/client language” promoting the entrepreneurial skill “negotiation.”
5.5 | Agile practices that promote the entrepreneurial skill “information acquisition”
In Table 2, industry and academia indicate which agile practices promote the entrepreneurial skill “information acquisition.” Those are the following
agile practices: “onsite customer,” “sprint planning meeting,” “planning game/weekly interactions and meetings,” “pair programming,” “short daily
meetings,” “sprint review meeting,” “sprint review retrospective,” “metaphors/client language,” “open office space,” “sprints/project delivery
cycles,” “open/negotiable scope contract,” and “frequent small releases.”
There is a tendency for organizations to excel at the narrowing of relationships between the company and the agile team focusing on promot-
ing the value of the product aligned to agile development.47,61 This narrowing of relationships between the company and the agile team can also
promote the entrepreneurial skill “information acquisition” in software developers.
There is also a tendency for organizations to align managing activities and software development as highlighted by authors such as Fitzgerald
and Stol6 and Ebert and Brinkkemper.62 Ebert and Brinkkemper62 highlight how important it is for software companies to have the skill to acquire
information. Its authors state that many companies achieve efficiency and low cost by focusing on projects, technology, and resources, although
they do not sell as expected because they do not have sufficient knowledge about the market and about the concept of value for the customer.
Additionally, Fitzgerald and Stol6 highlight the need of integration between business strategies and software development.
Possible relations between the entrepreneurial skill “information acquisition” and agile practices may be found in studies such as Fitzgerald and
Stol,6 Ebert and Brinkkemper,62 and Järvinen et al,63 which present ways to improve software developers' perception about concepts of value,
strategy, and market, that is, promoting efficacy while seeking for efficiency and agility.
In Table 2, the disagreements pointed out are in relation to the agile practices “simple design/solutions” and “continuous integration” promoting
the entrepreneurial skill “information acquisition.” The academia indicates that these agile practices do not inhibit nor promote the entrepreneurial
skill “information acquisition,” while the industry indicates that the aforementioned agile practices promote this entrepreneurial skill.
5.6 | Agile practices that promote the entrepreneurial skill “problem solving”
In Table 2, industry and academia indicate which agile practices promote the entrepreneurial skill “information acquisition.” Those are the following
agile practices: “onsite customer,” “sprint planning meeting,” “planning game/weekly interactions and meetings,” “pair programming,” “short daily
meetings,” “sprint review meeting,” “sprint review retrospective,” “metaphors/client language,” “open office space,” “sprints/project delivery
cycles,” “open/negotiable scope contract,” “simple design/solutions,” “continuous integration,” and “refactoring.”
It can also be observed in Table 2 a disagreement between the opinion of the industry and the academia with regard to the agile practices “fre-
quent small releases,” “product/sprint backlog,” “product/sprint burndown chart,” “test driven development,” and “sustainable pace” promoting the
entrepreneurial skill “problem resolution.”
It has been over a decade since Nerur and Balijepally indicated that the then emerging “agile philosophy” was announcing a new epistemol-
ogy of software development. Agile philosophy has contributed to shaping a form of management that passes in a deterministic and mechanistic
form of troubleshooting for a dynamic and interactive software development process that counts on the active involvement of all
stakeholders.64
Because of agile philosophy, as can be observed in the study conducted by Nerur and Balijepally,64 that flexibility, collaboration, and respon-
siveness of self‐organized agile teams have provided improvisation in accordance with the problem context and promoted the use of inventive
capacity for troubleshooting.
According to Nerur and Balijepally64 and Rodríguez et al65 the intensive software industry is evolving towards a value‐driven and adaptive real‐
time business paradigm. Fitzgerald and Stol6 indicate that the generalized adoption of agile methods is an evidence that nowadays software devel-
opment environments need to have flexibility and rapid adaptation capacity. In this sense, it becomes clear also that the vast adoption of agile
methods is creating software development environments that value problems resolution skills even for the adapter and for the innovator styles,
that is, improving agile practices and seeking new ways of working and delivering value to the customer.
Nerur and Balijepally64 argues that specifying the smallest possible set of requirements to initiate a project can provide an organizational cli-
mate conducive to innovation and creativity. For defining all the specifications already at the beginning of the project, it can restrict the inventive-
ness of team members regarding their skill to identify problem solving opportunities.
From the perspective of the agile culture model,20 it is possible to assume that the skill to improvise according to the problem context and the
inventive skill for troubleshooting, pointed out by Nerur and Balijepally,64 are resulting from experiences with issues of internal integration
experiences by agile teams during the adoption of agile philosophy. That is, through lessons that were learned internally, with attempts and errors,
the team defined a set of basic assumptions about how to resolve problems.
It is also possible to assume that the skill to have flexibility and rapid adaptation, currently needed for software development environments,6 is
resulting from experiences with external adaptation issues experienced by agile teams during the adoption of agile methods. That is, flexibility and
adaptability are based on a set of shared assumptions about how to act in front of the widespread adoption of agile methods that ended up defining
the competition profile and market demands.
In this way, by observing an organizational environment with flexibility and rapid adaptation capability against competition and market need, in
which software developers improvise according to problem context and are inventive in the resolution of problems, actually what is being observed
are visible artifacts of agile culture. These visible artifacts are manifestations of behaviors based on a set of basic values and assumptions that were
learned and shared by the team.
6 | E N T R E P R E N E U R I A L SK I L L S A S V I S I B LE AR TIFAC TS OF A GIL E CU LT UR E
In this research, participants from industry and academia confirm that entrepreneurial skills can be regarded as visible artifacts of agile culture. This
can be seen in the results obtained for Q8 and exhibited in Figure 6.
In this section, a set of entrepreneurial skills that were considered as potential visible artifacts of an agile culture is presented from the point of
view of the model proposed by Tolfo et al.20
Figure 8 shows a set of relationships between entrepreneurial skills and agile practices, synthesizing the opinions of survey respondents from
industry and academia that took part at the research.
The relationships between agile practices and entrepreneurial skills presented in Figure 8 are a representation of how this dynamic may occur
in an agile culture. It is important to notice that the occurrence and meaning of those relationships must be contextualized to the reality of each
team and software company. Based on the discussion, it is considered that an agile culture fosters the following entrepreneurship skills:
• “Identification of new opportunities”: it is related to the skill that software developers acquire for incorporating new technologies and identify
new opportunities on products and services and new market niches as a consequence of their experience with agile practices.
• “Valuation of opportunities and creative thinking”: it is related to the skill that software developers acquire to become more criticist and cre-
ative for incorporating new technologies, evaluating opportunities for products and services and new market niches as a consequence of their
experience with agile practices.
• “Persuasive communication”: it is related to software developers acquiring the skill of convincing in order to know how to communicate in an
effective and persuasive way as a consequence of their experience with agile practices.
• “Negotiation”: it is about the skill that software developers acquire in order to commercialize the software, estimating values for contracts,
outsourcing services, and other commercialization ways related to the software market.
• “Information acquisition”: it is related to the skill that software developers acquire to search for information about the agile software project.
• “Problem solving”: it is related to the skill that software developers acquire to resolve problems as a consequence of their experience with agile
practices, both for the adapter or innovator styles, that is, improving what already exists or creating new solutions.
Observing Figure 8, when one sees software developers working as an entrepreneurial team in an agile culture, looking for new opportunities
to innovate or improve what already exists, with capacity to solve problems, negotiate and communicate persuasively, what is being seen is a set of
visible artifacts of the agile culture.
Those entrepreneurial skills observed at the level of visible artifacts are usually related to the agile practices. As those practices are being
improved, software developers also improve their entrepreneurial skills. Under the perspective of the agile culture, this work analyses the hypoth-
esis of the promotion of entrepreneurial skills by agile practices.
It is argued that as the promotion of entrepreneurial skills is a result of the improvement of agile practices in an agile culture, both are related to
a set of values that are sustained by shared basic assumptions. Those basic assumptions are acquired by internal integration and external adaptation
in agile software projects.
That way, in an agile culture, at the level of visible artifacts, an entrepreneurial skill such as “identification of new opportunities” may have been
developed because of the agile practice of having the customer effectively participating at the software projects. The more intense interaction with
the customer may improve the developer's knowledge about the customer's segment and its necessities; thus, it may gradually develop the skill to
find new product and services opportunities and new market niches.
At the level of declared values, search for innovation, respect, communication, and feedback may be some of the values that are being adopted
and that fosters the agile practice “onsite customer” in an agile culture. These same values allow also the development of the entrepreneurial skill
“information acquisition.” The need for a higher interaction with the customer also allows the development of other skills such as “persuasive com-
munication,” “information acquisition,” and “negotiation.”
FIGURE 8 Entrepreneurial skills as visible artifacts of agile culture
When adopting an agile practice that involves the effective participation of the customer, the software team is acquiring an experience that
involves external adaptation because the organization is seeking for an innovative approach to reach its goals. Adopting that agile practice also
involves issues of internal integration because someone (the customer) with a perspective different from the technical one is going to become part
of the team. Thus, common languages and group limits should be reviewed.
Both internal integration and external adaptation issues are consequence of a set of meanings that were developed from the experience
acquired by the organization. One study66 proposes to examine the evolution and modification process of the agile practices considering the
dynamical context of the culture of each organization. They consider that each organization has in its culture meanings that are constantly created,
recreated, and discussed along its lifecycle.
The shared basic assumptions in an agile culture are related to the creation of meanings by a group that is learning to adapt agile practices,
principles, and values to resolve issues of internal integration and external adaptation. However, the meaning of a given value in a company is
not necessarily the same in another. The shape that a given practice takes in one company would not be necessarily the same in another company.
It is also important to remember that each company develops its own agile culture, which is a consequence of experiences with issues of inter-
nal integration and external adaptation used to adopt agile practices adapted to the kind of customer, software under development, and activity
segment. As the agile culture is unique in each company, the way agile practices and entrepreneurial skills happen is also distinct for each
organization.
7 | L I M I T A TI O NS A N D T H R EA T S TO V A LI DT Y
When analyzing whether entrepreneurial skills are promoted with the use of agile practices, it is noticed that one of the limitations of this research
is the fact that the verification of the opinion of software engineering professors and professional software developers only occurred through ques-
tionnaires. An alternative could be the use of the Delphi method67 to seek the opinion of the survey participants. In addition, experiments and
observations were not conducted in the respondents working environment. That means that case studies and validations have not yet been con-
ducted with real applications in projects and software companies to confirm the hypothesis.
No studies have been conducted to verify changes that may have happened in business activities as a result of entrepreneurial skills. There
were also no comparison studies between companies that already have experience with agile development and non‐agile companies in order to
verify the presence of entrepreneurial skills.
It must also be considered that the fact that part of the respondents are adepts of agile development may produce bias in the research. In this
sense, it is noticed that in the questionnaire aimed at Academia, respondent 12 stated the following while answering Q8:
As the entrepreneur is a change agent and being engaged to agility where change is always welcome, I think my responses have always
been in the positivistic sense. So, consider, perhaps, a probable bias.
In this way, it may be considered that there may be a tendency in respondents' answers because some of them are enthusiastic about agile
methods. However, as mentioned before, it is believed that the experience with agile practices can provide more secure and coherent responses
to the questionnaire. In the same sense, the experience in teaching and researching software engineering may provide more reflective and criticist
responses, thus avoiding a biased agility enthusiasm. It is also noticed that, according to Runeson et al,45 applying the questionnaire to people who
play different activities (industry and academia) is supposed to reduce the bias of the survey respondents.
As for the limitation represented by the investigator's bias, it is believed to be reduced in this research, because the questionnaire was con-
structed by 4 researchers, thereby mitigating the possibility of formulating questions with one investigator's bias, according to Runeson et al.45
Also, it could be observed that one of the limitations of this work is the relatively small number of professional software developers and soft-
ware engineering professors that participate at the research. Perhaps it would be better to perform a survey involving a greater number of
professionals.
Another issue to be considered is the reason for only 39 out of 80 invited people answered the questionnaire. One possibility is the fact that
part of the invited people has no experience or interest in the subject of entrepreneurship. In this sense, it is noticed that in the questionnaire sent
to the academia, one of the software engineering professors did not participate in the research, and remarked that due to not applying agile
methods in the context of entrepreneurship, did not feel sufficiently experienced to indicate which agile practices foster entrepreneurial skills.
Another possibility is that part of the guests may give up responding to the questionnaire due to the large amount of relationships presented in
Q4, Q5, Q6, and Q7. These questions involve 120 relationships between agile practices and entrepreneurial skills that need to be assessed by the
respondents, which needs considerable attention.
It must be observed that not all agile practices have been analyzed in this research. It was presented a non‐exhaustive set of relationships
between agile practices and entrepreneurial skills (Table 2). Thus, other agile practices and methods that could have been analyzed were not as,
for example, those proposed by Agile Kanban68 and Lean Software Development.69
A potential threat to the validity of the results pointed out in this study is the fact that the survey did not asked respondents about the basic
values and assumptions of an agile culture that in their opinion provide support for promoting entrepreneurial skills. In the questionnaire, it was
asked only if the respondent agrees that entrepreneurial skills are visible artifacts of an agile software development culture (Q8). As a result, at
the levels of shared values and basic assumptions of the agile culture (see Figure 7), the same information already specified by Tolfo et al20
remained.
8 | CONTRIBUTIONS AND FUTURE WORKS
Software professionals have largely boosted the advancement of agile development, but research has not accompanied this advancement in an
equivalent manner.69 In this way, several techniques and tools are being developed and incremented by the software industry, but the academia
and research are still in initial stages in the studies of these emerging topics.47
For example, Dingsyr and Lassenius47 and Mishra et al70 consider delivery of value as an emerging topic in software industry, but
research is still trying to track the evolution that occurs in the industry in this field. In this sense, agile development with entrepreneurial
skills that is addressed in this article can enable the delivery of value that transcends the technical scope, extending into the organizational
and business scope.
In this way, a contribution of the research presented in this article is to indicate that entrepreneurial skills are already inserted into an emerging
context, in which agile development has evolved from the delivery of technical value to organizational and commercial value. Thus, this article high-
lights that in the practice of the software industry, entrepreneurial skills are informally, and even unconsciously, inserted into agile development
based on the delivery of organizational and commercial value.
However, the benefits of these entrepreneurial skills in agile development have not been studied by the academia. Then, another contribution
from this article is to indicate that agile practices can extend their benefits by surpassing the technical scope to achieve organizational and business
scope to promote entrepreneurial behavior in software developers. With that in mind, new research possibilities are opened.
This work also contributes to research and practice in the area for highlighting that entrepreneurial skills associated with agile practices are
stemming from the evolving context of agile development. That is, the origin of these skills is associated with the evolution of the value delivery
that has been occurring in agile development.
The implications of this work for practice and research are presented in this section. The proposition of a new field of studies linking the areas
of entrepreneurship and agile development is one of the main contributions of this paper. On the other hand, the presentation of this new front of
studies also points to a range of future work possibilities.
As a consequence for the practice at the software industry, the hypothesis that agile practices adoption promotes entrepreneurial skills in soft-
ware developers is relevant in face of a scenario in which a boosting economy demands software entrepreneurship that is required by techno parks,
innovation habitats, and start‐ups fomented by public and private capital. The connectivity provided by the Internet and emerging technologies
such as digital businesses, social networks, and mobile devices usually creates entrepreneurship opportunities for creating new businesses. Addi-
tionally, they also create a dynamic market, which values entrepreneurship in the internal organizational environment, where employees with entre-
preneurial skills are chosen to lead, innovate, and assume risks in software projects.
The results obtained in this survey indicate that experience with agile practices can promote entrepreneurial skills. Therefore, it is possible to
elaborate a new hypothesis, whereby the adoption of agile methods fosters entrepreneurship in the software area. Thus, it is estimated that this
work is a contribution to agile software development, as it includes entrepreneurship as a topic of research in the academic perspective and prac-
tical application in the perspective of the software industry.
Considering that there are software companies seeking to foster the entrepreneurial posture in their employees, this study can contribute to
the software industry, as it shows that in an agile culture, promoting entrepreneurial skills, can be aligned to formulation of strategies and meeting
organizational goals.
Another contribution was the identification of entrepreneurial skills as visible artifacts of agile culture. This indicates the possibility that the
same basic assumptions and shared values that allow to adopt agile practices also promote entrepreneurial skills. This possibility can be regarded
by the industry in initiatives aimed at promoting agile culture, for example. It can also be considered by the academia in new research topics.
As a practical implication for the academia, it should be considered that there are universities and university programs that assume that the
entrepreneurial posture is needed in the formation of academics and future software engineers. This study may be useful for educators in software
engineering, whether to reaffirm or to revise their educational and learning goals and strategies.
As a contribution and implication for research, this work identified a brand‐new field of study that consists of the investigation of the relations
between entrepreneurial academic research and software practice and agile development. Therefore, the following questions arise: What are the
interconnections between software entrepreneurship and agile development? What are the contributions of academic research and practice in
software entrepreneurship to the practice and academic research in agile development? What are the contributions of academic research and prac-
tice in agile development to the practice and academic research in software entrepreneurship?
The identification of this new field of study was obtained by applying the model proposed by Kuura et al21 that explores the relation between
the practice and academic research in these areas, which, despite being apparently distinct, may have potential interrelations to be explored.
Kuura et al21 elaborate their model in order to show interconnections between the areas of entrepreneurship and project management by
observing professional practice and academic research.
FIGURE 9 Link 1 for interrelations between the software entrepreneurship practices and agile development practice
In this new field of study, it is proposed a study of the interrelations between research and practice in software entrepreneurship and agile
development. It seeks to relate the 2 areas (software entrepreneurship and agile development) with the 2 fields (professional practice and academic
research). Each of the interrelations is named as a “link.” Those links are sequentially illustrated in the following figures (link 1 in Figure 9, link 2A in
Figure 10, link 2B in Figure 11, link 3A in Figure 12, link 3B in Figure 13, and link 4 in Figure 14).
In link 1, represented in Figure 9, it is proposed to explore the interrelations between software entrepreneurship practice and agile develop-
ment practice.
Software entrepreneurship practice and agile software development practice are distinct fields. The first one is focused on the creation of new
businesses, innovation, and selling products and services; as for the second one, it is based on a set of principles, values, and practices that seek for
delivering software in an efficient way and with more value added. However, both software entrepreneurship practice and agile development prac-
tice intend to seek for convergent organizational goals.
In the relationships between agile practices and entrepreneurial skills presented in this paper, it is possible to notice some shared organizational
goals between agile practice and entrepreneurial practice. For example, in this work, the agile practices “short daily meetings” and “pair program-
ming” were related to the entrepreneurial skill “persuasive communication.”
Using link 1 as lenses, it is possible to produce new studies for each of the relationships between agile practices and entrepreneurial skills (shown
inTable 2). For example, Weterings and Koster71 interviewed founder entrepreneurs to find the influence of their experience with previous works on
the innovator performance of small software companies in The Nederlands. New research questions could be proposed to founder entrepreneurs to
verify the influence of earlier experiences with agile methods on the innovator performance of small software companies in a global context.
One issue to be assessed in software development environments is if internal integration and external adaptation experiences due to the adop-
tion of agile practices is providing a more holistic view for software developers (according to holistic view as proposed by Fitzgerald and Stol6). It
must be verified if they are seeking for innovation possibilities in the market by proposing new technological solutions or making adaptations that
could generate meaningful changes in existing solutions.
Another possibility is to use the agile culture model proposed by Tolfo et al20 to compare agile development practice with entrepreneurship
practice. Using the perspective of entrepreneurial skills as visible artifacts of agile culture (shown in Figure 8), case studies in software companies
may promote workshops using the agile culture perspective to discuss entrepreneurship skills that can be used to solve problems, innovate, and
reach organizational goals.
On the other hand, it is possible to analyze link 1 under distinct aspects. Qualitative studies may analyze the hypothesis that shared tacit
assumptions in agile culture promote entrepreneurship (based on Figure 8). It is related to the investigation on how the practical experiences with
external adaptation and internal integration for adopting agile methods may improve entrepreneurship behavior in software developers.
FIGURE 10 Adding link 2A between practice

and academic research on software
entrepreneurship
FIGURE 11 Adding link 2B between practice

and academic research on agile development
FIGURE 12 Adding link 3A between agile

development practice and software
entrepreneurship research
FIGURE 13 Adding link 3B between software

entrepreneurship practice and academic
research on agile development
FIGURE 14 Interrelationships model between

software entrepreneurship and agile
development research and practice
It is important to remark that in order to identify possible relations between the practice of entrepreneurship and the practice in agile methods
from link 1, the state of the practice of each area must be initially known. Some authors such as Hansson et al,72 Rodríguez et al,73 Papatheocharous
and Andreou,74 and Diebold and Dahlem75 present the state of the practice in agile development. However, works that mention the state of the
practice in entrepreneurship in software companies were not found.
Researches of this kind are necessary to explore the perspective of link 1. It is necessary to identify goals, dimensions, and terms for search.
One of the terms that remind entrepreneurship is “software startup.” One study76 indicates as a future work a research about the state of the prac-
tice in the context of software startups. Kuura et al,21 despite relating entrepreneurship practice with project management practice, do not
approach agile project management,77 which could be done in future works.
Systematic literature reviews, such the one conducted by Rodríguez et al,65 are necessary to explore the interconnections between entrepre-
neurship and agile development. By studying the concept of continuous development of software functionality, based on this systematic mapping,
the authors provided an overview of the state of the art, investigated scientific evidences in the results reported, and identified appropriate areas
for further research about this subject. Similarly, future research may, for instance, identify the areas of entrepreneurship that represent an evolu-
tion of the practices of agile development.
Considering the perspective of link 1, it can be noticed that future studies can also investigate possible relationships between the practice of
entrepreneurship and the practice of agile development adopted in conjunction with other approaches. For example, systematic revisions such as
those performed by Silva et al78 and Torrecilla‐Salinas et al79 indicate that the use of agile practices to meet the objectives of Capability Maturity
Model Integration (CMMI) is of interest to academia and industry. Thus, future studies could investigate possible relationships between
entrepreneurship practice and the agile development practice associated with CMMI.
The links of type 2 (Figures 10 and 11) relate professional practice and academic research in each area. As shown in Figure 10, link 2A indicates
relations between professional practice and academic research on software entrepreneurship.
While checking that many agile practices are industry‐oriented and not academia‐oriented,47 mentions that there are instances in which the
state of the art of techniques and tools is driven by industry and by consultants, while the academia, often, is delayed in research focusing on these
thematic. The authors cite the fact that research on “continuous experimentation” is still in its early stages, despite its relevance to the industry.
They also argue that there is a growing interest in continuous value delivery as a research topic.
Mishra et al70 conducted a study to check the themes that have been of interest to the agile practitioners and the themes that agile researchers
have been investigating to ensure that the state of art and practice are aligned. Mishra et al70 identified emerging trends that are significant both for
industry and for agile development research. They have also found that some themes of increasing interest in the academia have had a growing
interest in the industry.
The studies conducted by Dingsyr and Lassenius47 and Mishra et al70 agree on the industry concern about the evolution of the technical scope
of agile practices to the organizational scope. Continuous experimentation, continuous value delivery, and agile company are some examples of
trends that have aroused industry interest.
Even though it has not been mentioned by Dingsyr and Lassenius47 and Mishra et al,70 there is an indication that promoting entrepreneurial
skills is aligned to emerging topics that are of interest of the industry. This is because in agile development, the entrepreneurial skills are an evo-
lution of the technical skills for the organizational scope.
Aiming at the evolution of technical skills for the organizational scope in agile development, future works could investigate new research prob-
lems that relate the entrepreneurial skills to the emerging topics pointed out by Dingsyr and Lassenius47 and Mishra et al.70.
Paternoster et al76 may be seen as a research initiative in the perspective of link 2A. That study identifies the most adopted software devel-
opment practices in software startups by means of a systematic review of the state of the art on this subject.
To improve the work of the above‐mentioned authors, new works could verify how practice and academic research on software entrepreneur-
ships are related. In that perspective, it is possible to analyze, for example, dimensions and indicators in different contexts of practice in software
entrepreneurship.
Moreno et al80 conducted a study to allow both academia and software industries form a view of the relationship between software engineer-
ing education and industrial needs. From the perspective of link 2A, future works could explore the relationship between entrepreneurial skills edu-
cation in software engineering and software industry needs.
Similar to Moreno et al,80 future research may identify and classify technical, managerial, and entrepreneurial skills deemed relevant to an
entrepreneur in the software area.
The link of type 2B, added in Figure 11, refers to the relations between professional practice and academic research about agile development.
The relationship of link 2B leads to researches such as those of previous studies,2,9,81-85 which approach issues related to the state of practice
and academic research in the agile development area.
It is highly recommended to continue research on the state of practice and state of the art about agile methods, because it is an area of knowl-
edge that since its beginning addresses the interactions between practice of the software industry and academic research. Those areas should con-
tinue to evolve together.
It is worth to recall that agile methods have their origin in industry and the experiences of their creators converging to the agile manifesto.
Then, the agile methods practice began to gain greater interest in the academia, and research hypotheses started to be formulated by academia
and confirmed by industry. In that sense, Dingsøyr et al2 notice that most academic research about agile is inspired in emerging practices of the
industry.
Links of type 3, shown in Figures 12 and 13, lead to the possible interactions between practice and research in areas that are apparently dis-
tinct. Link 3A (Figure 12) points to the interrelations between agile development practice and software entrepreneurship research.
Under the perspective of link 3A, it is necessary to investigate how the agile development practice contributes to the academic research in
entrepreneurship and vice versa.
Future research could also verify the relationship among each of the agile practices and entrepreneurial skills studied in this paper (Table 2).
Holtkamp et al27 used the Delphi method to indicate the importance of soft competences in global software development. Delphi can also be used
to investigate the importance of agile practices for entrepreneurship in the area of software and entrepreneurial skills for agile development. In
addition, the grounded theory86 can be used to empirically analyze issues related to the hypothesis of promotion of entrepreneurial skills in soft-
ware developers.
Other studies under the perspective of link 3A may be possible. For example, Paternoster et al76 highlight that courage, enthusiasm, compro-
mise, and leadership are related to the necessary skills of software startup workers. The following research question could be analyzed: Does the
practical experience with agile methods make software developers more aligned to the entrepreneurship profile of software start‐up workers? Per-
formance metrics related to agile practices that could influence the entrepreneurial profile of software developers could be defined.
Link 3B shown in Figure 13 leads to the relationships between software entrepreneurship practice and agile development research.
Researches using the perspective of link 3B could analyze how software entrepreneurship practice contributes to research on agile methods.
On the other hand, it could also be analyzed how research about agile methods contributes to software entrepreneurship practice.
Quantitative research could show the opinion about agile methods of entrepreneurs in the software area who created innovative businesses. It
could also be used software entrepreneurship indicators to find in the practice of software entrepreneurship possibilities for academic research
about agile methods.
The practice of entrepreneurship in software is of interest for agile development teaching and academic research. That interest may be seen in
works such as El‐Khalili,30 Read et al,31 and Zaina and Álvaro.32
Future research may discover how the existing entrepreneurship programs in higher education in technology are related to the context of the
software market. It could be analyzed how those programs use technical knowledge about software engineering and agile development from other
courses of the curricular base, as well as the contributions to the entrepreneurship practice in software.
As for the link of type 4, added in Figure 14, it points to relationships between software entrepreneurship and academic research on agile
methods. Figure 14 brings a general representation of the interconnection model between research and practice of software entrepreneurship
and agile development.
Figure 14 completes the interrelationships model between software entrepreneurship and agile development research and practice, but it does
not prevent new questions to arise. Under the perspective of link 4, the study presented in this paper is a contribution for the software entrepre-
neurship and agile development academic research.
Both software entrepreneurship and agile development have potential for research, being necessary to identify the interconnection points
between those fields. In that sense, systematic mappings and revisions are important to form a knowledge base about software entrepreneurship
and agile development. Entrepreneurship may be included as a theoretical perspective in researches about agile development, because software
entrepreneurship was not directly chosen as one of the theoretical perspectives used in researches about agility as, for example, the one conducted
by Dingsøyr et al.2
Ojala87 conducted a study that incorporates entrepreneurship theories to contribute to cloud computing and information systems research
fields. The same study also suggests that the relationship between the areas of entrepreneurship and information systems can promote identifica-
tion of new opportunities in cloud computing. On the same way, future studies could incorporate entrepreneurship theories to improve research on
agile development and vice versa.
From this preliminary research, we found that an evolution of agile practices has been addressed in papers relating agile development to adding
value, strategic management, and innovation practices. However, the term “entrepreneurship” has not been mentioned in those papers, and there-
fore, an emphasis on the role of the agile development in entrepreneurship was not observed. Thus, one of the challenges for future works is to
elaborate a theoretical perspective of software entrepreneurship that is consistent and well dimensioned.
9 | C O N CL U S I O N
In this paper, we argue that the learning process for the adoption of agile practices, contemplating internal integration and external adaptation
issues, leads also to the development of entrepreneurial skills. This argument is based on the fact that the experience with the adoption of agile
practices generates learning on the issues of internal integration and external adaptation in the software team. Such learning is then internalized
and become part of the tacit assumptions shared by the team. These tacit assumptions generate meaning to the principles and values that support
the agile culture.
We propose relationships between a set of entrepreneurial skills and a set of agile practices to be confirmed. These relationships were assessed
by surveys with professional software developers that work with agile development (software industry perspective) and software engineering pro-
fessors (academic perspective). The results were analyzed using the perspective of agile culture and showed the consistency of the relationships
between the agile practices and the entrepreneurial skills and indicated the agreement of the survey respondents about the promotion of entre-
preneurial skills by the adoption of agile practices.
We consider then that, in agile culture, the practical experience with agile methods enhances entrepreneurial skills in software developers.
Software companies that promote an agile culture also consequently promote entrepreneurial skills in their software team. From this study,
researchers and software practitioners can perceive entrepreneurial skills that result from agile culture and practice, as an object of study and a
means for stimulating innovation capacity and competitiveness.
From the results of this study, we propose a new research area that aims to investigate more comprehensively the interconnections between
academic research and practice of entrepreneurship in software and agile development.
This new research area is illustrated in the interconnection model between software entrepreneurship research and practice and agile devel-
opment; it represents a breakthrough for studies involving the possible relationships between practice and research in agile development and
entrepreneurship.
Thus, we observe that entrepreneurship and agile development practices must continue to evolve along with technological advancement and
dynamics of the software market. In parallel, academic research must also evolve, either contributing to the industry by proposing new practical
applications derived from academic studies and by seeking in the professional practice empirical evidences to test hypotheses and theories formu-
lated by the academia.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank CNPq (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico) for the financial support at the early
stages of this work.
ORCID
Cristiano Tolfo http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1950-6461
Raul Sidnei Wazlawick http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4293-1359
Marcelo Gitirana Gomes Ferreira http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1912-9982
Fernando Antonio Forcellini http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2851-6028
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How to cite this article: Tolfo C, Wazlawick RS, Ferreira MGG, Forcellini FA. Agile practices and the promotion of entrepreneurial skills in
software development. J Softw Evol Proc. 2018;e1945. https://doi.org/10.1002/smr.1945

Agile Practices and The Promotion of Entrepreneurial Skills in Software Development

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Agile Practices and The Promotion of Entrepreneurial Skills in Software Development

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Received: 21 January 2017 Revised: 18 January 2018 Accepted: 19 January 2018

RESEARCH ARTICLE ‐ EMPIRICAL

Agile practices and the promotion of entrepreneurial skills in

agile culture, agile methods, agile practices, entrepreneurial skills, entrepreneurship

2.1 | Entrepreneurial skills

References Entrepreneurial Skills Managerial Skills Technical Skills

2.2 | Model for representing agile culture

FIGURE 1 Agile culture iceberg. Adapted from Tolfo et al20

3.1 | Research context and sample profile

3.2 | Data collection and analysis

FIGURE 2 Data that assist in defining the

FIGURE 3 Survey respondents training

FIGURE 4 Professional experience of survey

FIGURE 5 Survey respondents' knowledge

4 | RESULTS AND ANALYSIS

FIGURE 6 Opinion about entrepreneurial

Results are presented in Figure 3 below.

For industry, Q2 has the following text:

Results obtained from Q2 are depicted in Figure 4.

Results obtained from Q3 are depicted in Figure 5.

Each one of those questions was complemented by the following text:

FIGURE 7 Threads for which respondents

5.4 | Agile practices that promote the entrepreneurial skill “negotiation”

FIGURE 8 Entrepreneurial skills as visible artifacts of agile culture

8 | CONTRIBUTIONS AND FUTURE WORKS

FIGURE 10 Adding link 2A between practice

FIGURE 11 Adding link 2B between practice

FIGURE 12 Adding link 3A between agile

FIGURE 13 Adding link 3B between software

FIGURE 14 Interrelationships model between

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