An Empirical Study on the Relationship between the Use of Agile Practices and the Success of Software Projects that Use Scrum

This work has the goal of investigating the relationship between the use of agile practices and the success of software projects that use Scrum. The method used in the investigation was a cross-sectional survey that collected data from 62 software engineers associated to 11projects in 9 different software firms, representing 75% of the population in the studied projects. The results show that only 8 of the 25 attributes associated with agile practices have significant correlation with project success. These results suggest that it is important to consider carefully which agile practices must be prioritized in order to increase the effectiveness of the deployment of agile methodologies in the software industry.

[1]  Fabio Q. B. da Silva,et al.  Designing motivation strategies for software engineering teams: an empirical study , 2010, CHASE '10.

[2]  George Lazarevic,et al.  An Exploratory Study of the New Product Development Process Utilized by Software Companies Using Agile Product Development Approach ( What are the most critical factors that make a product successful using the Agile Approach ? ) , 2003 .

[3]  Urvashi Rathod,et al.  Defining ‘success’ for software projects: An exploratory revelation , 2006 .

[4]  Agile Manifesto,et al.  Manifesto for Agile Software Development , 2001 .

[5]  Tsun Chow,et al.  A survey study of critical success factors in agile software projects , 2008, J. Syst. Softw..

[6]  Fabio Xerfan Nahas,et al.  Metodologia científica I , 2012 .

[7]  Ken Schwaber,et al.  Agile Project Management with Scrum , 1980 .

[8]  William M. K. Trochim,et al.  Research methods knowledge base , 2001 .

[9]  A. T. Dias.  Projetos e relatórios de pesquisa em administração , 2005 .

[10]  W. R. Howard.  Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products , 2010 .

[11]  J. Rockart,et al.  A primer on critical success factors , 1981 .

[12]  Luís César de Moura Menezes.  Gestão de projetos , 2009 .

[13]  Vinod Kumar,et al.  Identifying some important success factors in adopting agile software development practices , 2009, J. Syst. Softw..

[14]  Daniela E. Damian,et al.  Selecting Empirical Methods for Software Engineering Research , 2008, Guide to Advanced Empirical Software Engineering.

[15]  Fabio Q. B. da Silva,et al.  A Quantitative Assessment on Team Building Criteria for Software Project Teams , 2012 .

[16]  Andraž Cej,et al.  Agile software development with Scrum , 2010 .

[17]  David Gefen,et al.  What do software practitioners really think about project success: an exploratory study , 2005, J. Syst. Softw..

[18]  Marisa Villas Bôas Dias.  Um novo enfoque para o gerenciamento de projetos de desenvolvimento de software , 2005 .

[19]  Alberto Luiz Albertin.  Valor estratégico dos projetos de tecnologia de informação , 2001 .

[20]  A. Cockburn,et al.  Agile Software Development: The People Factor , 2001, Computer.

[21]  Kam Jugdev,et al.  A Retrospective look at our Evolving Understanding of Project Success , 2005, IEEE Engineering Management Review.

[22]  Kurt R. Linberg.  Software developer perceptions about software project failure: a case study , 1999, J. Syst. Softw..