  Agile Methods are designed for customization; they offer an organization or a
team the flexibility to adopt a set of principles and practices based on their
culture and values. While that flexibility is consistent with the agile
philosophy, it can lead to the adoption of principles and practices that can be
sub-optimal relative to the desired objectives. We question then, how can one
determine if adopted practices are "in sync" with the identified principles,
and to what extent those principles support organizational objectives? In this
research, we focus on assessing the "goodness" of an agile method adopted by an
organization based on (1) its adequacy, (2) the capability of the organization
to provide the supporting environment to competently implement the method, and
(3) its effectiveness. To guide our assessment, we propose the Objectives,
Principles and Practices (OPP) framework. The design of the OPP framework
revolves around the identification of the agile objectives, principles that
support the achievement of those objectives, and practices that reflect the
"spirit" of those principles. Well-defined linkages between the objectives and
principles, and between the principles and practices are also established to
support the assessment process. We traverse these linkages in a top-down
fashion to assess adequacy and a bottom-up fashion to assess capability and
effectiveness. This is a work-in-progress paper, outlining our proposed
research, preliminary results and future directions.
