Success Factors of Agile Information Systems Development: A Qualitative Study

We conduct a qualitative, interview-based study with 12 participants in order to shed further light on the success factors of agile ISD because quantitative studies reported on contradictory results. First, we identify four success factors from previous literature that form the conceptual basis of our investigation. Those factors are the team, customer, organization, and communication. We extend previous findings by opening up the black box of each of those factors. This is achieved by identifying sub-factors that enable agile ISD success. We find that autonomy is the most important team characteristic, whereas agile values and management support are crucial for the organizational level. For the customer role, customer involvement is judged to be most important, and for communication, the meeting practices are the most frequently mentioned sub-factor. In contrast to the other categories, we note that sub-factors for the organizational level were mentioned by fewer participants.