A dissection of agile software development in changing scenario and the sustainable path ahead

In the recent years some unprecedented changes in business processes have been observed due to pandemic. The world has experienced the power of information technology to sail through this testing times. A huge number of software have been created and used during this pandemic. Agile is the most popular software development methodology in the current decade and its key values are frequent interactions, development of working software, customer collaboration and response to change. These values are heavily dependent on interactions among key stakeholders like developers, testers, scrum masters and customers. Now due to pandemic situation, software development process itself has undergone a few key changes i.e. shifting the workspace to home, restricted travels, challenges in collaborative work in global platform, etc. The research work takes a deep dive into the impact of COVID-19 specially on the health of the software, work environment factors including challenges and survival strategies. The health of a software is investigated by software metrics like productivity, customer satisfaction, defect counts. The work environment aspects include employee motivation, work life balance, ease of global team management, etc. A survey is conducted to collect feedback from more than 4000 IT professionals working on 177 different projects. Finally the results are analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively and a sustainable future path is suggested with mixed mode of work. To verify the strength and internal consistency of the survey, Cronbach Alpha coefficient method is implemented. The suggested future mode of work is also validated by evidence of implementation of revised work policies in different organization across the globe.