Translating Agile Development in Different Institutional Contexts: Dynamism, Pluralism, and Ratcheting over Time

Agile development has emerged as the dominant approach to developing software across much different institutional environments. We report a study of how organizations in four different institutional contexts translate agile development in different ways. Drawing on institutional logics and translation theory, we highlight how the dynamism and pluralism of the institutional environment influence the ways that agile development is translated by organizations. For example, contexts higher in pluralism move to increased documentation, whereas contexts marked by less dynamism move toward longer cycle times. Further, we identify a process of “ratcheting” for how these organizations translate agile methods in a stepwise, accumulative manner away from canonical agile practices over time.