Identification and prioritization 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 hierarchy of importance of these factors. This study addresses this gap through a case study of a South African software development organization. The study identifies and prioritizes the critical success factors of Agile software development in the South African software development industry. In total, 15 semistructured interviews were conducted with Agile practitioners in various roles in the case study organization to identify the critical success factors. A total of 25 critical success factors were identified and grouped into six categories: organizational, team, customer, process, technical, and project. Based on the findings, the research proposed a framework for critical success factors in Agile software development in the South African software development industry. The factors were then ranked based on the combined frequency of mentions of the factor and its descriptive attributes. Organizational culture was the highest ranked factor, placing the highest importance on this factor. In addition, the organizational and team categories had the most highly ranked factors, while the project category had the least ranked factors. The research findings provide information that, if used by Agile practitioners in South Africa, may increase the success of Agile software development projects in the South African software development industry.