Identification and prioritisation of success factors in agile software development in the South African software development industry

Abstract

Agile software development is a methodology initiated to offer "agility" by addressing the rigidity of traditional methodologies to limit the associated negative effects. It has been increasingly adopted in the South African software development industry. However, there is no comprehensive research on the factors that affect the success of agile software development projects in a South African context and the priority of these factors. This study addresses this gap through a case study of a South African software development organisation. The study identifies and prioritises the critical success factors of agile software development in the South African software development industry.

Fifteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with agile practitioners in various roles in the case study organisation to identify the critical success factors. Twenty-five critical success factors were grouped into six categories: organisational, team, customer, process, technical and project. Based on the findings, the research proposes a framework for critical success factors in agile software development in South African software development organisations. The factors were then ranked based on the combined frequency of mentions of the factor and its descriptive attributes. Organisational culture was the highest-ranked factor, showing that the Agile project perceived it to have the most influence on Agile project success. The ranking shows that the organisational and team factors have the most highly ranked factors, while the project category has the least ranked factors. The research findings provide information that, if used by agile practitioners in South Africa, may increase the success of the Agile software development project in the South African software development industry.