A survey study of critical success factors in agile software projects Tsun Chow, Dac-Buu Cao * School of Business and Technology, Capella University, Minneapolis, MN 55402, USA Received 20 February 2007; received in revised form 12 August 2007; accepted 17 August 2007 Available online 26 August 2007 Abstract 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 different way of developing software as compared to the traditional method- ologies. However, their success has mostly been anecdotal, and research in this subject is still scant in the academic circles. This research study was a survey study on the critical success factors of Agile software development projects using quantitative approach. Based on existing literature, a preliminary list of potential critical success factors of Agile projects were identified and compiled. Sub- sequently, reliability analysis and factor analysis were conducted to consolidate this preliminary 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 survey 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 screen- ing 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. Limitations of the study are discussed together with interpretations for practitioners. To ensure success of their projects, managers are urged to focus on choosing a high-caliber team, practicing Agile engineering techniques and following Agile-style delivery strategy. Ó 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Software development; Agile methods; Critical success factors 1. Introduction While software is so important for the all facets of the modern world, software development itself is not a perfect process. Despite the efforts to employ software engineering methodologies, software development has not been consis- tently successful, thus often resulting in delayed, failed, abandoned, rejected software projects. Even those software projects already implemented may need expensive on-going maintenance and corrective releases or service packs. The above shortcomings have affected the bottom line for information technology (IT) and software development organizations in a big way. The challenge here is how soft- ware development management can be improved to avoid the above problems of waste and inefficiency? There has been a recent emergence of a new class of software develop- ment process called Agile methods, which operate rather differently from traditional methods. The present research seeks to identify and provide insight into the critical success factors (CSF’s) that help software development projects using agile methods to suc- ceed. The study compiled the success factors reported in the agile literature, performed reliability analysis and factor analysis on those factors and consolidated them into a final 12 possible success factors for Agile projects in five differ- ent categories: Organizational, People, Process, Technical, and Project. A web-based survey was conducted to gather feedback from 109 agile software projects from 25 coun- tries around the world, and the collected data were ana- lyzed using the multiple regression method. The analysis addresses the following questions: (a) Are these 12 factors truly the critical success factors of Agile software develop- ment projects?; (b) If so, what is the relative importance of 0164-1212/$ - see front matter Ó 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jss.2007.08.020 * Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 714 952 5590. E-mail address: dac-buu.cao@siemens.com (D.-B. Cao). www.elsevier.com/locate/jss Available online at www.sciencedirect.com The Journal of Systems and Software 81 (2008) 961–971