An Empirical Study into Social Success Factors for Agile Software Development

Abstract — Though many warn that Agile at larger scale is problematic or at least more challenging than in smaller projects, Agile software development seems to become the norm, also for large and complex projects. Based on literature and qualitative interviews, we constructed a conceptual model of social factors that may be of influence on the success of software development projects in general, and of Agile projects in particular. We also included project size as a candidate success factor. We tested the model on a set of 40 projects from 19 Dutch organizations, comprising a total of 141 project members, Scrum Masters and product owners. We found that project size does not determine Agile project success. Rather, value congruence, degree of adoption of Agile practices, and transformational leadership proved to be the most important predictors for Agile project success. Index Terms — Agile Software Development, social success factors, value congruence, transformational leadership, predictive model. I