Measuring Agile Agreement: Development and Validation of the Manifesto and Principle Scales

2025-12-09

AI Summary

Prior research conflates practitioners’ agreement with the Agile Manifesto’s abstract values versus its twelve concrete principles, resulting in ambiguous and psychometrically weak measures of “Agile agreement.” This study is the first to explicitly distinguish these two constructs, developing and validating two independent, psychometrically rigorous scales: the Manifesto Agreement Scale (MAS) and the Principle Agreement Scale (PAS). Using item analysis, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), proportional odds logistic regression, Bland–Altman plots, and intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC), we systematically evaluated reliability, construct validity, and dimensional independence. Based on a sample of Belgian IT professionals, both scales demonstrate strong internal consistency and convergent/discriminant validity. Although moderately correlated (r ≈ 0.5), MAS and PAS measure substantively distinct constructs and are not interchangeable. This work provides the first publicly available, fine-grained, dual-dimensional instrument for assessing person–Agile alignment.

Technology Category

• Multiagent Systems: Agreement, Argumentation & Negotiation
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Agent Architectures
• Natural Language Processing: Discourse, Pragmatics & Argument Mining

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurements
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Metrics for user behavior and evaluating success
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Web performance, measurement, and characterization

Abstract

While the importance of human factors in agile software development is widely acknowledged, the measurement of an individual's "agile agreement" remains an ill-defined and challenging area. A key limitation in existing research is the failure to distinguish between agreement with the abstract, high-level values of the Agile Manifesto and agreement with the concrete, day-to-day practices derived from the 12 Principles. This paper addresses this methodological gap by presenting the design and validation of two distinct instruments: the novel Manifesto Agreement Scale (MAS), and the Principle Agreement Scale (PAS), which is a systematic adaptation and refinement of a prior instrument. We detail the systematic process of item creation and selection, survey design, and validation. The results demonstrate that both scales possess important internal consistency and construct validity. A convergence and divergence analysis, including Proportional Odds Logistic Regression, a Bland-Altman plot, and an Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC), reveals that while the two scales are moderately correlated, they are not interchangeable and capture distinct dimensions of agile agreement. The primary contribution of this work is a pair of publicly available instruments, validated within a specific demographic of Belgian IT professionals. These scales represent a critical initial step toward facilitating a more nuanced measurement of agile agreement, distinguishing agile agreement across various levels of perception and aiding in a more refined interpretation of person-agile fit.

Problem

• Develops two scales to measure agreement with Agile Manifesto values versus Principles.
• Distinguishes abstract agile values from concrete daily practices in measurement.
• Creates validated tools to assess nuanced person-agile fit in software development.

Innovation

• Developed Manifesto Agreement Scale for abstract values
• Created Principle Agreement Scale for concrete practices
• Validated scales with statistical analysis for distinct dimensions