Jazz improvisation as a learning metaphor for the scrum software development methodology
Authors: Suscheck Charles A. , Ford Randal 
Published: June 2008

Software development projects are a complex undertaking. Aside from the technical aspects, numerous difficulties arise in their management. A one‐size‐fits‐all, top‐down methodology does not work, due to the nature of software projects and the people involved.

In the last few years, there has been a trend away from command and control development processes toward people‐centric processes such as Extreme Programming, Scrum, Crystal Clear, Feature‐Driven Development. People‐centric software development processes often fall under the term Agile Software Development. Despite the maturity of these processes as well as a significant number of publications and training describing them, organizations are not always well positioned to adopt the most effective agile software development processes due to the difficulty in creating a supportive organization.

One way to understand the cultural and organizational orientations needed to support agile development processes is to view the organizational behavior with a metaphor. For example, the metaphor of software as a collaborative game has been widely used as one way to better understanding agile development. Organizational behavior styles are another way to gain understanding of organizational orientations. In organizational design, for example, there are two dominant orientations: the first orientation is bureaucratic, with strict hierarchy, authoritative power positions (e.g. command and control) and an emphasis on maintaining conformity with the status quo. The second orientation is the postindustrial, with decentralized and lateral structure, team‐based and mission centered, with reciprocal power relations, emphasizing employee creative thinking and initiative. The postindustrial orientation, oriented toward people rather than structure, has a stronger affinity for the logic underlying agile software development and is difficult to apply.

The question is, what organizational metaphor can be effectively applied to underlying organizational orientation needed to support agile software development process? To provide a tentative answer, scholars in organization theory and design have posited the jazz metaphor to theorize how we conceive the organizational dynamics inherent in the postindustrial organization. From the point for this article, it is argued the jazz metaphor better elucidates the supportive organizational culture required to effectively use an agile software development processes, specifically Scrum.

The purpose of this article is to explore the jazz metaphor as it applies to a representative agile software development methodology, ultimately building a case that the metaphor can be used as a mechanism to better understand the organizational behavior required for self‐emerging behavior often exhibited in teams using the representative agile development methodology. We will introduce and develop a linkage between organizational behavior in the context of a postindustrial orientation and the collaborative behaviors often exhibited in agile software development, using Scrum as a basis for the comparison; then explore the jazz metaphor as it relates to organizational behavior. Finally, we will explore the jazz improvisation metaphor as an effective way to reconceive organizational behavior exhibited in our representative software development methodology: Scrum. Ultimately, our intent will be to establish the jazz improvisation metaphor as a basis for further exploration into the understanding of agile software development methodology team behavior. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.