## 2 Research Background and Related Work  
### Theoretical Background  
In general, Agile is the umbrella term for a family of management practices [11]. Nowadays, many other organizations are actively adopting agile project management [12] as an iterative approach to delivering a project throughout its life cycle [13]. The reasons for implementing Agile practices concern the more flexible and adaptive working structures [14], active stakeholders and extensive user participation throughout the project [15], higher performance visibility [16], and transparency [17], to name just a few. Considering the software industry, the Agile Alliance [18] is one of the most prominent organizations devoted to organizations and individuals that apply the values and principles of Agile. This non-profit, membership organization was founded on the Manifesto for Agile Software Development (ASD) [19]. By nature, ASD refers to a group of software development methods based on iterative and incremental development [20], where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing cross-functional teams [19]. The Agile Manifesto expresses four key values, defined as follows [21]:  
1. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools;
2. Working software over comprehensive documentation;
3. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation;
4. Responding to change over following a plan. It should be noted and empathized here that, in the case of the fourth value, an agile view on the project means that responding to changes, instead of neglecting or even ignoring them, benefits the project by providing additional value. Moreover, these four values are broken down and detailed through twelve supporting principles, formulated in the following way [22]:  
1. Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through the early and continuous delivery of valuable software;2. Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage;
3. Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference for the shorter timescale;
4. Businesspeople and developers must work together daily throughout the project;
5. Build projects around motivated individuals. Provide them with the environment and support they need and trust them to get the job accomplished. 6. The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation;
7. Working software is the primary measure of progress;
8. Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely;
9. Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility;
10. Simplicity, the art of maximizing the amount of incomplete work, is essential. 11. The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams;
12. At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly. Based on the above principles, several agile methodologies have been built upon [23], including Scrum [24], Kanban [25], and Extreme Programming (XP) [26]. According to the 15 th State of Agile Report [27], Agile adoption within software development teams increased from 37% in 2020 to 86% in 2021, where Scrum was the most popular (66%), with an additional 15% of the two following derivations, namely ScrumBan (9%) and Scrum/XP (6%); the minority concern Kanban (6%), Iterative (4%), XP (1%), Lean Startup (1%), and others (5%), whereas 2% of the respondents did not know which Agile methodology was adopted. More specifically, over the last two decades, several agile practices have been developed that rely on the interaction of self-organizing teams with cross-functional skillsets.