Hi All,

I'm hoping that someone out there can assist me with some research I'm doing for
a Master's thesis in Project Management at RMIT. I'm following a line of
enquiry which suggests there are organisations that, while having adopted agile
development methods, do in fact use some aspects of plan-driven methods in
managing their software development projects. This conjecture was first made by
Barry Boehm from UCLA in 2002, and since explored in more detail in "Balancing
Agility and Discipline" which he co-wrote with Richard Turner in 2004.

My thesis' current, somewhat clunky, working title is "Agile and Plan-driven
Software Development Methodologies Co-existence: a Case Study". What I'm
hoping to find are examples of where agile and some aspects of plan-driven
methods do co-exist. To that end I need to interview people across different
levels - from developer to management - and functions within an organisation,
gathering their views and experience on this matter.

Ideally, the organisation will belong to a somewhat larger enterprise, with the
development group large enough to be running a number of projects
simultaneously. My supervisor suggests that I need to conduct at least a dozen
interviews in order to obtain a good result. It would be great to conduct all
these in one organisation, but realistically I think I'll be taking smaller
samples from a number of organisations.

While I'd be ecstatic to discover an organisation that does indeed use a
combination both agile and plan-driven methods, I'm happy to conduct interviews
with an organisation that just uses agile. For my purposes a null result is
still a valid result.

In order to reduce your inconvenience I'd be coming to your work place in order
to conduct the interviews. These could then be held on or off site. The
information gathered will be confidential; anonymity is guaranteed.

What's in it for you and your organisation? You'd be contributing to the agile
– plan driven debate, and assisting with academic research. I'd be more than
happy to distribute my findings once they're published. I don't have a budget
for this, but if coffee is needed as a bribe then so be it.

If your organisation, or one you know of, would be interested in contributing to
this academic research then I'd love to hear from you. Similarly if you have
any questions, then feel free to contact me. My contact details are 0422 643
236 or at john_paterson@...

Regards,

John Paterson