Abstract
The number of research studies and surveys on software project management is constantly growing. However, the state of the practice of software project management methodologies is still disparate and confusing. Therefore, project teams are often confused by whether or not they should adopt agile methodologies, or keep on working in a “traditional” way. Given this focus, this research aims at understanding, through different expert perspectives, the challenges and success factors encountered in different types of ICT projects. We adopted a qualitative research approach based on semi-structured interviews with senior project management consultants. Consultants are involved in different kinds of ICT projects: agile and plan-driven projects. The research paper has important implications for practitioners and academics. Findings show that the nature of the reported problems varies depending on whether the teams are working in an agile or in a traditional environment.
Keywords
- ICT projects
- Agile methodologies
- Plan-driven methodologies
- State of the practice
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Sutherland, J., Viktorov, A, Blount, J. & Puntikov, N. (2007). Distributed scrum: Agile project management with outsourced development. In Proceedings of the 40th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 247a.
Svensson, H. & Host, M. (2005). Views from an organization on how agile development affects its collaboration with software development team. In International Conference on Product Focused Software Process Improvement, Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Vol. 3547, pp. 487–501). Springer, Finland.
Paasivaara, M., Durasiewicz, S. & Lassenius, C. (2008). Distributed agile development: Using scrum in a large project. In 3rd International Conference on Global Software Engineering (pp. 87–95). IEEE.
https://www.standishgroup.com/sample_research_files/chaos_report_1994.pdf.
Chow, T., & Cao, D. B. (2008). A survey study of critical success factors in agile software projects. The Journal of Systems and Software, 81, 961–971.
Cooper, R. G. & Sommer, A. F. (2016). The Agile–Stage-Gate hybrid model: A promising new approach and a new research opportunity. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 33(5), 513–526.
Coram, M., Boehm, S. (2005). The impact of agile methods on software project management. In 12th IEEE International Conference and Workshops on Engineering of Computer-Based Systems, IEEE Computer Society (pp. 363–370). Washington, DC, USA.
Fernandez, D. J., & Fernandez, J. D. (2008). Agile project management—Agilism versus traditional approaches. Journal of Computer Information System, 49(2), 10–17.
Karlström, D., & Runeson, P. (2005). Combining agile methods with stage-gate project management. Software IEEE, 22(3), 43–49.
Highsmith, J., & Cockburn, A. (2001). Agile software development: the business of innovation. Computer, 34(9), 120–122.
Poppendieck, M., & Poppendieck, T. (2006). Implementing lean software development: from concept to cash. Addison-Wesley.
Petersen, K., & Wohlin, C. (2009). A comparison of issues and advantages in agile and incremental development between state of the art and an industrial case. Journal of Systems and Software, 82(9), 1479–1490.
Boehm, B. (2002). Get ready for agile methods with care. Computer Publications, 35(1), 64–69.
Chong, J. (2005). Social behaviors on XP and non XP: A comparative study. In The Agile Development Conference, IEEE Computer Society (pp. 39–48).
Melnik, G., & Maurer, F. (2005). Perceptions of agile practices: A student survey. In 2nd XP Universe and First Agile Universe Conference on Extreme Programming and Agile Methods (pp. 241–250).
Robinson, H. & Sharp, H. (2004). The characteristics of XP Teams. In Extreme Programming and Agile processes in software engineering (pp. 139–147). LNCS, Vol. 3092. Springer.
Sharp, H., & Robinson, H. (2008). Collaboration and co-ordination in mature extreme programming teams. International Journal of Human Computer Studies, 66(7), 506–518.
Paasivaara, M., Durasiewicz, S. & Lassenius C. (2009). Using scrum in distributed agile development: A multiple case study. In 4th International Conference on Global Software Engineering (pp. 195–204). IEEE.
Begel, A. & Nagappan., N. (2007). Usage and perceptions of agile software development in an industrial context: An exploratory study. In 1st International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (pp. 255–264). IEEE Computer Society.
Middleton, P., Flaxel, A. & Cookson, A. (2006). Lean software management case study: Timberline Inc. In 6th International Conference on Extreme Programming and Agile Processes in Software Engineering (pp. 1–9).
Poole, J. (2004). Distributed product development using extreme programming. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Vol. 3092, pp. 60–67). Springer.
Khalil, C., Fernandez, V. & Houy, T. (2013). Can agile collaboration practices enhance knowledge creation between cross-functional teams? DSDM (Vol. 205, pp. 123–133), Springer.
Koskela, J., & Abrahamsson, P. (2004). On site customer in an XP project: empirical results from a case study. Software process improvement. In 11th European Conference, Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Vol 3281, pp. 1–11). Berlin: Springer.
Mann, C., & Maurer, F. (2005). A case study on the impact of scrum on overtime and customer satisfaction. Proceedings of the Agile Development Conference (pp. 70–79). Washington: IEEE Computer Society.
Simons M. (2002). Internationally Agile. InformIT.
Yap. M. (2005). Follow the sun: Distributed extreme programming development. In Proceedings of Agile Conference (pp. 218–224). Kirkland.
Khalil, C., Fernandez, V., & Houy, T. (2013). Les méthodes agiles en développement informatique. Presse des Mines, Paris.
Gibson, W. J., & Brown, A. (2009). Working with qualitative data. UK: Sage Publications.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Khalil, C. (2018). The State of the Practice of Agile and Plan-Driven Approaches in ICT Development Projects: An Exploratory Research Study. In: Rossignoli, C., Virili, F., Za, S. (eds) Digital Technology and Organizational Change. Lecture Notes in Information Systems and Organisation, vol 23. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62051-0_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62051-0_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-62050-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-62051-0
eBook Packages: Business and ManagementBusiness and Management (R0)