Defining agile patterns

The variety of agile methods and their similarity could be a problem for software engineers to select a single or a number of methods and to properly utilize them in a project. An approach to resolving it is to provide concise and adjustable solutions of problems, recurring under certain circumstances, with justification of why and how to apply them. In this chapter we present an approach to acquiring and defining knowledge about agile software development in terms of patterns. We emphasize the rationale in the pattern structure. We discuss how the usage of the agile patterns contributes to organizing and delivering organizational knowledge and to improving the software processes in an organization. Early results from industrial trials are presented to demonstrate additional benefits, which an organizations gains from adopting the agile patterns. In the concluding part we define the directions for further research on the topic.