https://research.aalto.fi/files/11744469/1_s2.0_S0164121216300826_main.pdf

Challenges and success factors for large-scale agile transformations

As business and technology environments change at an unprecedented rate, software development agility to respond to changing user requirements has become increasingly critical for software development performance. Agile software development approaches, which emphasize sense-and-respond, self-organization, cross-functional teams, and continuous adaptation, have been adopted by an increasing number of organizations to improve their software development agility. However, the agile development literature is largely anecdotal and prescriptive, lacking empirical evidence and theoretical foundation to support the principles and practices of agile development. Little research has empirically examined the software development agility construct in terms of its dimensions, determinants, and effects on software development performance. As a result, there is a lack of understanding about how organizations can effectively implement an agile development approach.

Using an integrated research approach that combines quantitative and qualitative data analyses, this research opens the black box of agile development by empirically examining the relationships among two dimensions of software development agility (software team response extensiveness and software team response efficiency), two antecedents that can be controlled (team autonomy and team diversity), and three aspects of software development performance (on-time completion, on-budget completion, and software functionality). Our PLS results of survey responses of 399 software project managers suggest that the relationships among these variables are more complex than what has been perceived by the literature. The results suggest a tradeoff relationship between response extensiveness and response efficiency. These two agility dimensions impact software development performance differently: response efficiency positively affects all of on-time completion, on-budget completion, and software functionality, whereas response extensiveness positively affects only software functionality. The results also suggest that team autonomy has a positive effect on response efficiency and a negative effect on response extensiveness, and that team diversity has a positive effect on response extensiveness. We conducted 10 post hoc case studies to qualitatively cross-validate our PLS results and provide rich, additional insights regarding the complex, dynamic interplays between autonomy, diversity, agility, and performance. The qualitative analysis also provides explanations for both supported and unsupported hypotheses. We discuss these qualitative analysis results and conclude with the theoretical and practical implications of our research findings for agile development approaches.

/pdf/toward-agile-an-integrated-analysis-of-quantitative-and-4mlwbr8r49.pdf

Toward agile: an integrated analysis of quantitative and qualitative field data

This research paper presents evidence from an exploratory survey on the use of agile project management (APM) practices and the presence of APM enablers in 19 medium-and large-sized companies from ...

Can Agile Project Management be Adopted by Industries Other than Software Development

Secure engineering is relatively more popular for software development methodologies which use standard SDLC such as waterfall, prototyping, etc. However, for agile methodologies (such as extreme programming, scrum, etc.), the adoption of secure engineering is still a debate among academics and practitioners since it potentially alter the nature of agile. This paper tries to investigate farthest works of the adaptation of secure engineering to agile methods, and to compile best propositions on how to conduct agile software development by still adhering security principles. From the review, addition/recruitment of security engineer into team is the most appreciated, while the modification of agile methodology and project management is not really favored by practitioners. This paper will be a starting point of further study to fill research/knowledge gap which is provided in this paper.

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel7/7176053/7224583/07224607.pdf

Preliminary Investigation

Self-organizing teams have been recognized and studied in various forms-as autonomous groups in socio-technical systems, enablers of organizational theories, agents of knowledge management, and as examples of complex-adaptive systems. Over the last decade, self-organizing teams have taken center stage in software engineering when they were incorporated as a hallmark of Agile methods. Despite the long and rich history of self-organizing teams and their recent popularity with Agile methods, there has been little research on the topic within software wngineering. Particularly, there is a dearth of research on how Agile teams organize themselves in practice. Through a Grounded Theory research involving 58 Agile practitioners from 23 software organizations in New Zealand and India over a period of four years, we identified informal, implicit, transient, and spontaneous roles that make Agile teams self-organizing. These roles-Mentor, Coordinator, Translator, Champion, Promoter, and Terminator-are focused toward providing initial guidance and encouraging continued adherence to Agile methods, effectively managing customer expectations and coordinating customer collaboration, securing and sustaining senior management support, and identifying and removing team members threatening the self-organizing ability of the team. Understanding these roles will help software development teams and their managers better comprehend and execute their roles and responsibilities as a self-organizing team.

Self-Organizing Roles on Agile Software Development Teams

https://it323.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/science9.pdf

A survey study of critical success factors in agile software projects

While software is so important for all facets of the modern world, software development itself is not a perfect process. Agile software engineering methods have recently emerged as a new and better way of developing software as compared to the traditional methodologies. However, their success has mostly been anecdotal, and research in this subject is still scant in the academic circles. This research study was carried out to explore and determine the critical success factors of Agile software development projects using quantitative approach. 
The research compiled success and failure factors of Agile projects identified in the existing literature into a preliminary list of potential critical success factors. Subsequently, reliability analysis and factor analysis were conducted in order to consolidate the list into a final set of 12 possible critical success factors for each of the four project success categories---Quality, Scope, Time, and Cost. 
A survey was conducted among Agile professionals, gathering empirical data from 109 Agile projects from 25 countries across the world. Multiple regression techniques were used, both at the full regression model and at the optimized regression model via the stepwise screening procedure. The results revealed that only 10 out of 48 hypotheses were supported, identifying three critical success factors for Agile software development projects: (a) Delivery Strategy, (b) Agile Software Engineering Techniques, and (c) Team Capability. 
The results provided researchers and practitioners with insight on the comparative values of success factors, and might help managers to quickly determine if their organizations are ready to jump onto the Agile bandwagon.

Dac-Buu Cao

Papers

A survey study of critical success factors in agile software projects

An empirical investigation of critical success factors in agile sotware development projects