Aligning computing systems with their environment: an agile perspective

Ideally, all computing systems should be closely aligned to the context in which they are used. Unfortunately, although the increasingly popular agile software development methods attempt to be customer oriented, the practices involved tend to focus more attention on the software product. The purpose of this paper is to examine this imbalance in relation to eXtreme Programming (XP) and suggest how improvements might be achieved through the use of soft systems methodology (SSM). A process is described that combines parts of SSM with XP while still attempting to remain within the general agile philosophy. An example is used to illustrate the process proposed