A Systematic Literature Review on the Critical factors that Contribute to Success of Agile Development Projects

Abstract: Objective: The objective of this thesis is to identify the critcal success factors in an agile development projects. Research Questions: Two research questions are addressed in this thesis. The questions are: "What factors define success in agile software development" and "How do these factors contribute to success of a project". Methodology: In order to investigate and identify the critical success factors and their relating success attributes, a systematic literature review was conducted. 9 online journal database search engines were used to search for relevant research literature to this thesis, and 24 research studies were chosen. The studies were then filtered by using exclusion criteria. Then in each study, the relevant data was extracted by using keyword searches with keywords being related to the success factors and the success attributes. Finally, the findings were analyzed using frequency analysis to see which factors and attributes contribute to success. Since not many research studies have been conducted on this particular topic, the terminologies and naming conventions seemed tricky. To counter that, various synonyms and search criteria were used to retrieve an accurate result. In addition, detailed reading of some of the research studies were conducted to find additional keywords. Results: In this thesis, it is reported that technical factors are addressed by the most number of papers to be the most important factor, followed by process, organizational, people, and finally project. Almost all the success attributes were addressed by some research studies, with the exception of 1 success attribute that was not addressed by any research study. Conclusion: From the findings of this thesis, it can be concluded that with the exception of one success attribute, all the rest of the success factors and success attributes are relevant for project to success. This thesis provides an insight to the critical success factors and how the relating attributes are described in various projects. The critical success factors are still a relatively unexplored concept in the software engineering field, and further research on the concepts presented in this paper can help put them in practice in agile driven projects to achieve further success.