Abstract
It is of interest for practitioners as well as academics to apply Agile software development practices in high ceremony environments. This paper presents the challenges a software development team faced when developing software for the Italian Army in a contracting environment. We used action research as the research methodology to first identify the challenges and then make improvements. The identified challenges are volatile requirements, low domain knowledge, and unclear responsibilities. To address the challenges, the team applied Extreme Programming in combination with domain analysis techniques. Moreover, the team customized a requirement management system to increase visibility to show the causes of delays. The overall feedback from the team was that the proposed practices improved managing the requirements. Copyright © 2013 by Knowledge Systems Institute Graduate School.