Key Success Factors of Scrum Software Development Methodology in Sri Lanka

Abstract

The information technology industry emerged with distinctive differences compared to other industries due its wide application on day-to-day business processes. Today, it is important for businesses to identify the information technologies that are going to have an effect on them, and respond suitably with IT-based solutions to remain competitive. These traits trickle down to the identical fundamental activities of software development, where having maximum flexibility to accurately and quickly comply with the client’s demands had become a must-have in every cutting edge development company. In this context, software development companies have shifted their development from conventional methodologies like waterfall methodology towards agile software development. Amongst, agile software development methodologies, “scrum” has become more popular amongst IT firms due to several advantages inherent in it especially from the customer’s perspective. The main aim of this study was to identify the key success factors that affect the scrum software development project success. According to the literature, a preliminary list of potential key success factors of agile project success was identified by the authors in [1] and their model was primarily considered in this study due to its wide application in agile software development arena. Data from 241 IT professionals were collected through an online questionnaire, and based on the results, the hypotheses were tested in order to identify the effect of each key success factor on the scrum software development project success.It was found that the management commitment, organizational environment, team capability, customer involvement, customer satisfaction, practice of agile software techniques, project management process, project nature, project type, project acceptability, and intension to use were having significant and positive effect on scrum software development project success.