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

Objective: The objective of this thesis is to identify the critcal success factors in an\nagile development projects.\nResearch Questions: Two research questions are addressed in this thesis. The\nquestions are: "What factors define success in agile software development" and "How\ndo these factors contribute to success of a project".\nMethodology: In order to investigate and identify the critical success factors and their\nrelating success attributes, a systematic literature review was conducted. 9 online\njournal database search engines were used to search for relevant research literature to\nthis thesis, and 24 research studies were chosen. The studies were then filtered by\nusing exclusion criteria. Then in each study, the relevant data was extracted by using\nkeyword searches with keywords being related to the success factors and the success\nattributes. Finally, the findings were analyzed using frequency analysis to see which\nfactors and attributes contribute to success. Since not many research studies have been\nconducted on this particular topic, the terminologies and naming conventions seemed\ntricky. To counter that, various synonyms and search criteria were used to retrieve an\naccurate result. In addition, detailed reading of some of the research studies were\nconducted to find additional keywords.\nResults: In this thesis, it is reported that technical factors are addressed by the most\nnumber of papers to be the most important factor, followed by process,\norganizational, people, and finally project. Almost all the success attributes were\naddressed by some research studies, with the exception of 1 success attribute that was\nnot addressed by any research study.\nConclusion: From the findings of this thesis, it can be concluded that with the\nexception of one success attribute, all the rest of the success factors and success\nattributes are relevant for project to success. This thesis provides an insight to the\ncritical success factors and how the relating attributes are described in various\nprojects. The critical success factors are still a relatively unexplored concept in the\nsoftware engineering field, and further research on the concepts presented in this\npaper can help put them in practice in agile driven projects to achieve further success.