Customized Agile Process

Summary: Agile development processes can be adapted and customized by incorporating responsible AI principles.

Type of pattern: Governance pattern

Type of objective: Trustworthiness

Target users: Project managers

Impacted stakeholders: Development teams, AI users, AI consumers, and AI impacted subjects

Lifecycle stages: All stages

Relevant AI ethics principles: Human, societal and environmental wellbeing, human-centered values, fairness, privacy protection and security, reliability and safety, transparency and explainability, contestability, accountability

Mapping to AI regulations/standards: ISO/IEC 42001:2023 Standard.

Context: Organizations have increasingly adopted Agile development to incrementally and iteratively develop software systems, including AI systems. However, the existing agile development methods mainly focus on delivering business value rather than ethical principles. RAI involves incorporating ethical principles into the development of AI systems. Failing to consider ethical principles in the development of AI systems can pose risks for stakeholders.

Problem: How can agile development methods be adapted to effectively address ethical issues in the development of AI systems?

Solution: To address ethical issues and ensure the responsible development of AI systems, it is necessary to integrate AI ethics principles into agile development methods. Various extension points can be added, including artifacts, roles, ceremonies, practices, and culture. This can be done through modifying existing artifacts (e.g., user stories) or adding new artifacts (e.g., regulatory requirements), as well as promoting RAI through existing roles (e.g., product) or new roles (e.g., ethicist). Modifying existing ceremonies (e.g., sprint planning) or introducing new ceremonies (e.g., ethics-oriented meetings) can also be helpful. Practices (e.g., user acceptance testing) and culture (e.g., hiring) are two effective ways to address ethical concerns in the agile development process.

Benefits:

  • Human centric view: The customized agile process pattern places a strong emphasis on AI ethics principles and human values.
  • Improved responsiveness: Integrating ethics into the agile process enables the development team to respond quickly to emerging ethical concerns.

Drawbacks:

  • Incompleteness: Some extension points may be overlooked.
  • Burden on organizations: Customizing agile processes may place an additional burden on organizations, particularly if it requires significant changes to existing processes.

Related patterns:

Known uses: