Empirical comparison of traditional plan-based and agile methodologies

Abstract

Purpose Aligning the project management methodology (PMM) to a particular project is considered to be essential for project success. Many outsourced software projects fail to deliver on time, budget or do not give value to the client due to inappropriate choice of a PMM. Despite the increasing range of available choices, project managers frequently fail to seriously consider their alternatives. They tend to narrowly tailor project categorization systems and categorization criterion is often not logically linked with project objectives. The purpose of this paper is to develop and test a contingency fit model comparing the differences between critical success factors (CSFs) for outsourced software development projects in the current context of traditional plan-based and agile methodologies. Design/methodology/approach A theoretical model and 54 hypotheses were developed from a literature review. An online Qualtrics survey was used to collect data to test the proposed model. The survey was administered to a large sample of senior software project managers and practitioners who were involved in international outsourced software development projects across the globe with 984 valid responses. Findings Results indicate that various CSFs differ significantly across agile and traditional plan-based methodologies, and in different ways for various project success measures. Research limitations/implications This study is cross-sectional in nature and data for all variables were obtained from the same sources, meaning that common method bias remains a potential threat. Further refinement of the instrument using different sources of data for variables and future replication using longitudinal approach is highly recommended. Practical implications Practical implications of these results suggest project managers should tailor PMMs according to various organizational, team, customer and project factors to reduce project failure rates. Originality/value Unlike previous studies this paper develops and empirically validates a contingency fit model comparing the differences between CSFs for outsourced software development projects in the context of PMMs.

Agile Project Management: A Systematic Literature Review of Adoption Drivers and Critical Success Factors

“…Dynamic product definition and effort estimation [30], [31], [32], [33], [34], [35], [36], [37], [38], [39], [40], [41], [42], [32], [43] 15…”

“…For a project to succeed, it is important not to underestimate the complexities and interdependencies between certain tasks. One way to address these issues is to ensure team members are knowledgeable and have expertise in the project area [21], [39], [43], and that there is effective leadership provided by the work cycle or project manager [21], [39], [44].…”

Improving research labs’ performance through project management guidelines: a case study analysis

“…(PMI, 2017a(PMI, , 2017b Regarding actions for human resources, centralized management generates a perception of non-compliance with deadlines, as it is believed that part of the team is unaware of the timelines. The team expects the manager to delegate the activities and this overloads the him/her (Ahimbisibwe and Daellenbach 2016;Hoda and Murugesan 2016). Table 4 presents the possible actions for this issue.…”

Success Factors Importance Based on Software Project Organization Structure

“…An attention worldwide has been paid to studying project success (e.g., [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21]), with two main directions of research: (1) CSFs and success, and (2) process maturity and success. Hereafter, we review research works in these two directions and we draw up our conclusions in the summary part.…”

“…A number of related research works focused on studying CSFs in agile software projects [17][18][19]. In [17], a comparison of CSFs was carried out between traditional-based and agile-based methodologies for the development of outsourced software projects. A number of CSFs were investigated covering four main categories that are related to organization, team, customer, and project uncertainty.…”