Workplace Factors that Shape Agile Software Development Team Project Success
Dan Schilling Nguyen · American Scientific Research Journal for Engineering, Technology, and Sciences (Global Society of Scientific Research and Researchers) · 2016
This study has implications for positive social change because organizations that understand the workplace factors may be able to improve project management strategies and cost benefits leading to higher efficiency, profitability, and productivity thus benefiting management, employees, and customers.Information technology (IT) project success depends on having a project manager with effective decision-making, leadership, and project management skills. Project success also depends on completing the project in a given budget, time, and scope. However, there is a limited understanding of the lived experiences of agile managers and the following workplace factors: cultural, functional, and organizational differences. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to understand these lived experiences of 10 agile software development team project managers or leaders at global workplaces based in the United States. The research questions were focused on the effect of these workplace factors on agile software development project success. In accordance with nonrandom purposeful sampling strategies, a snowball technique was used to find more participants. An open-ended, e-mail questionnaire was created and sent to participants to collect data. The data were coded to discern themes or patterns. According to study results, agile software development team members should acquire broader array of knowledge and experience, self-manage, and reduce time to market; culture is critical to agile team software development project success; leverage technical expertise and skills and foster team effectiveness ; align on outcome, work toward common goal, and same management structure; Accomplish more tasks in short time frame; teams need to work through trust issues early in a project and get to a point where there is trust across everyone on the teams; all knowledge must be shared; teams should have a communal location for all written knowledge, like a wiki; and servant leadership - leaders should enable teams rather than direct them.