Predicting Agile Success: The Critical Few Factors

Abstract

While Agile projects are more successful than traditional software development project management approaches, their overall success rate remains relatively low, with a high percentage of projects still deemed challenged or failed. This low project success rate is attributed to projects not being rigorously evaluated against critical success factors (CSF) of Agile projects and contemporary project success criteria. To identify the CSF that contribute to Agile software development project success as perceived by Agile practitioners, this study used a positivist approach to investigate the CSF of Agile software development projects. PLS-SEM with SmartPLS was used to analyse the data and test the hypotheses to identify significant relationships between the constructs and project success criteria. This research found that a few critical factors significantly contribute to Agile project success. The study developed a novel model that can be used to evaluate and measure project success.