Do the Scaled Agile Practices from S@S Help with Quality Requirements Challenges and If So, How Do They Do It?

Quality Requirements (QRs) pose challenges in many agile large-scale distributed enterprise systems. Often, enterprises counter such challenges by borrowing some heavyweight practices, e.g. adding more documentation. At the same time, agile methodologists proposed several scaled agile frameworks to specifically serve agile enterprises working on large and distributed systems. Little is known about the extent to which the proposed scaled frameworks address QRs and the specific ways in which this happens. Moreover, do these frameworks approach the QRs challenges in ways consistent with the Agile Manifesto? This paper treats these questions by analyzing one well-documented scaled framework, namely Scrum@Scale. We evaluated the alignment of Scrum@Scale with the Agile Manifesto, by means of the 4-Dimentional Analytical Tool proposed by other researchers. We then analyzed the practices of Scrum@Scale from the perspective of practitioners responsible for the QRs in a project, in order to understand how the Scrum@Scale practices mitigate those QRs challenges reported in previous work. Our analysis indicated that Scrum@Scale supports the agile values defined by the Agile Manifesto. Plus, we identified 12 Scrum@Scale practices that could (partially) mitigate one or more of the reported QRs challenges. Four of the reported QRs challenges got no remedy offered by Scrum@Scale.