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Agile methods have considerably transformed project management. The purpose of this study is to analyze the impact of agile (as compared to plan-driven) methods on customer satisfaction in the context of knowledge-intensive business services.

This study uses a survey examining the experiences of 361 customers with different outsourced software projects in Switzerland and a regression-based model to test the hypotheses.

The findings show that agile approaches can lead to higher customer satisfaction than plan-driven approaches, but the impact size is not as substantial as expected. The effect does not depend on the number of specification changes.

Managers must be aware that merely switching from a plan driven to an agile approach will not lead to substantial improvement in customer satisfaction. Satisfaction with the process is a more important driver of overall customer satisfaction than satisfaction with the service outcome. Thus, providers of knowledge-intensive services should train their employees in recognizing the importance of the cooperation process.

So far, the positive impact of agile methods is often only based on anecdotal evidence as well as on surveys examining the supplier perspective. This study provides support for the positive impact of agile methods on customer satisfaction, an important response variable from a marketing perspective, which has not been examined before in the context considered here.

Agile project management methods gain increasing attention of practitioners while they often remain neglected by scholarly research. Specifically, there is little known about how performance factors of agile firms differ from those of traditional firms. Scholars argue that these factors often relate to a firm’s human resource management (HRM). This study aims to analyze and compare the HRM architectures in agile and traditional project-based organizations that lead to high firm performance.

The authors apply fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis on data of 154 project-based organizations of diverse professional service industries in Russia.

This study’s findings suggest that HRM architectures of high-performance agile firms imply a broad use of ability-, motivation- and opportunity-enhancing practices and a high degree of HRM process centralization, while traditional firms adopt more diverse HRM architectures.

Based on this study’s results, the authors stress the importance of ensuring a good fit between a company’s project management approach and HRM architecture. The revealed configurations may also provide guidance for practitioners on designing effective HRM architectures in project-based organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to build a theoretic and practical framework, based on agile project management, to support the decision-making process in order to help companies in optimizing the reengineering production processes and improve management costs.

This paper seeks to propose an agile Reengineering Performance Model (ARPM) for managing projects of reengineering of processes and applies it in a real case study concerning a water bottling plant.

The proposed model should serve as a valuable tool to facilitate a successful business process reengineering design in the project management and intends to assist companies as they operate projects of transferring and optimizing production lines. Thanks to the use of ARPM tools, it is easy to modify the evolution of the project, with the possibility of extending or enhancing the application if necessary.

The main limits of the ARPM model are: it requires close collaboration among team; it is rather intense for developers; and it is necessary flexibility to change course as needed and to ensure delivery of the right product.

The main implications of the authors’ work for research and business are to propose a structured methodological approach, rigorous but simple, suitable to implement in any companies.

The novelty of the approach is to apply the agile approach not for software development but in a manufacturing company.

Aligning the project management methodology (PMM) to a particular project is considered to be essential for project success. Many outsourced software projects fail to deliver on time, budget or do not give value to the client due to inappropriate choice of a PMM. Despite the increasing range of available choices, project managers frequently fail to seriously consider their alternatives. They tend to narrowly tailor project categorization systems and categorization criterion is often not logically linked with project objectives. The purpose of this paper is to develop and test a contingency fit model comparing the differences between critical success factors (CSFs) for outsourced software development projects in the current context of traditional plan-based and agile methodologies.

A theoretical model and 54 hypotheses were developed from a literature review. An online Qualtrics survey was used to collect data to test the proposed model. The survey was administered to a large sample of senior software project managers and practitioners who were involved in international outsourced software development projects across the globe with 984 valid responses.

Results indicate that various CSFs differ significantly across agile and traditional plan-based methodologies, and in different ways for various project success measures.

This study is cross-sectional in nature and data for all variables were obtained from the same sources, meaning that common method bias remains a potential threat. Further refinement of the instrument using different sources of data for variables and future replication using longitudinal approach is highly recommended.

Practical implications of these results suggest project managers should tailor PMMs according to various organizational, team, customer and project factors to reduce project failure rates.

Unlike previous studies this paper develops and empirically validates a contingency fit model comparing the differences between CSFs for outsourced software development projects in the context of PMMs.

While the choices available for project management methodologies have increased significantly, questions remain on whether project managers fully consider their alternatives. When project categorization systems and criteria are not logically matched with project objectives, characteristics and environment, this may provide the key reason for why many software projects are reported to fail to deliver on time, budget or do not give value to the client. The purpose of this paper is to identify and categorize critical success factors (CSFs) and develop a contingency fit model contrasting perspectives of traditional plan-based and agile methodologies.

By systematically reviewing the previous literature, a total of 37 CSFs for software development projects are identified from 148 articles, and then categorized into three major CSFs: organizational, team and customer factors. A contingency fit model augments this by highlighting the necessity to match project characteristics and project management methodology to these CSFs.

Within the three major categories of CSFs, individual factors are ranked based on how frequently they have been cited in previous studies, overall as well as across the two main project management methodologies (traditional, agile). Differences in these rankings as well as mixed empirical support suggest that previous research may not have adequately theorized when particular CSFs will affect project success and lend support for the hypothesized contingency model between CSFs, project characteristics and project success criteria.

This research is conceptual and meta-analytic in its focus. A crucial task for future research should be to test the contingency fit model developed using empirical data. There is no broad consensus among researchers and practitioners in categorizing CSFs for software development projects. However, through an extensive search and analysis of the literature on CSFs for software development projects, the research provides greater clarity on the categories of CSFs and how their direct, indirect and moderated effects on project success can be modelled.

This study proposes a contingency fit model and contributes towards developing a theory for assessing the role of CSFs for project success. While future empirical testing of this conceptual model is essential, it provides an initial step for guiding quantitative data collection, specifies detailed empirical analysis for comparative studies, and is likely to improve clarity in debate. Since previous studies have not rigorously assessed the impact of fit between project characteristics, project environment and project management methodology on project success, additional empirically robust studies will help to clarify contradictory findings that have limited theory development for CSFs of software development projects to date.

Previous research for software development projects has frequently not fully incorporated contingency as moderation or contingency as fit (traditional vs agile). This research sets out to develop fully a contingency fit perspective on software development project success, through contrasting traditional plan-driven and agile methodologies. To do this, the paper systematically identifies and ranks 37 CSFs for software projects from 148 journal publications and holistically categorizes them as organizational, team, customer and project factors.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the feasibility of adopting a pilot project approach for foreseeing the working and financial viability of a technique, named as agile innovative total quality function deployment (agile ITQFD).

The agile ITQFD technique and its financial accounting system were designed. The implementation study of two pilot projects on agile ITQFD was conducted in an electronics switches manufacturing company. The statements of the financial accounting system were used to foresee the financial viability of agile ITQFD projects.

The research reported in this paper indicates the feasibility of adopting a pilot project approach and its financial accounting system for test implementing new techniques and models in the organisations aspiring to attain global competitiveness.

Like many other modern organisations, the company in which the research work was carried out has been aspiring to compete globally. Hence, even though the implementation study involved only two pilot projects, the implications of this research would represent the global scenario as well.

Currently practitioners struggle to choose the best techniques for applying them in specific cases. The research reported in this paper would help practitioners in this regard to adopt the pilot project approach and its financial accounting system.

The pilot project approach reported in this paper helps a company save time and money while exploring the practical compatibility of the technique. The financial accounting system presented would be useful in foreseeing the viability of projects using monetary values.

Agile methodologies are widely used to manage the technical complexity of software development, and project governance can provide feasible means of organizational support for complex project success. The purpose of this paper is to: analyze the project governance practices of public sector organizations, illustrate what kind of impact these practices have on agile software projects and describe the tensions of agile project governance.

The research is based on qualitative research strategy and applies elaborative logic with analyses of three case projects in the Finnish public sector.

The findings of the research describe how project governance practices can be categorized into six dimensions: business case, contracting, controlling, steering, decision-making and capability building. The results illustrate how these practices either support or detract the performance of agile projects. The results also show that there are two interfaces to agile project that create most tensions to governance – the public sector and technology.

The study contributes to both project management and information and communication technology theories by combining technical aspects of agile methodologies with micro-level project governance practices. The study also adds original value to academics by introducing the new concept of “agile project governance.” The results of this study will allow public sector project organizations to design appropriate governance mechanisms for agile projects, and to identify the challenges and tensions that need to be considered and managed in the process.

This paper aims to examine the link between information systems (IS) agility, HR performance management systems and job satisfaction using organizational information processing theory. The objective of this study answers the following questions: How does use of different IS agility impact HR systems and job satisfaction? What are the connecting pathways by which IS agility affects HR systems and job satisfaction?

The authors developed a theoretical framework based on the organizational information processing theory and collected primary data through an online-based questionnaire. Following these procedures, the authors analyzed the data using structural equation modeling (SEM).

SEM analysis of the data from 150 respondents supports the organizational information processing theory. The authors proposed eight hypotheses, and only one was rejected.

The data were collected from South Africa only, which is an emerging economy, and these cross-sectional data were gathered from the perspectives of the respondents.

The present paper empirically tests the conceptual model through the lens of organizational information processing theory.

This paper seeks to describe the application of the Agile software development approach to rapidly develop and deploy a variety of innovative IT applications.

The Agile approach is flexible and iterative with continuous feedback and constant communication. It is also marked by frequent and short delivery schedules. An Agile team of staff and students was formed for different projects, and visual tools were used to show process and progress. Team members were also co‐located (situated in the same space), a key element that allowed faster and direct communication. Within the Agile framework, the Crystal Clear methodology was selected, which is based on team size and criticality of the application to develop the workflow and iterative processes.

The Agile approach is particularly suited to innovation development and creative teams for rapid development of products, services, and technology. However, its acceptance is dependent on organizational culture and nature of application.

As a next step, it would be useful to test the Agile approach in an innovative application that is on a larger scale than six team members and with a different level of criticality.

Flexibility and adaptability are needed in managing the development of IT innovations and applications as they vary in size and complexity. The flexible and iterative Agile approach provided the framework to develop and implement these projects despite the small staff size.

There is little in the professional literature on software development and project management approaches for small teams. The Agile approach would be of interest to an IT unit or library with limited staff resources and interested in a lightweight framework to develop and deploy innovative projects.

This paper aims to investigate the extent to which newly agile organizations followed 2001’s Agile Manifesto, especially in terms of the 12 principles of the agile approach, as included in the Manifesto.

The authors conducted in-depth case studies of groups in three large business organizations that had recently adopted agile. Two researchers spent one day at each site, attending daily standups and conducting interviews with managers, developers and customers.

Across the three organizations, developers were faithful to two agile principles: the primacy of delivering valuable software continually and regular reflections on the process with an eye toward improvement. The developers were uniformly unfaithful to the principle that requires face-to-face communication. Each organization varied in their adherence to the remaining nine principles. Obstacles to faithful adoption included the experience of the organization with agile, the extent to which the industry was regulated and the extent to which developers and customers were physically dispersed.

While past research on agile development is extensive, this paper examines perspectives on the method and its adoption through the lens of the original Agile Manifesto and its 12 principles. The principles were grouped into three broader categories – software delivery, people and process – to provide additional insights and to sharpen the analysis.