The success factors of Agile: Since the Agile manifesto was created fifteen years ago, much research has been done into the success of the use of Agile development methods. What does it take to make Agile projects a success? Which critical success factors are needed for this?
Scrum is one of the most well-known Agile development methods. Scrum includes many critical success factors that we also see in Agile projects. The critical success factors that Scrum and Agile share are:
- Fast decision making
- Entire team involvement
- Good communication with the customer
- Customer feedback
- Working on team building
- Management support
Success factors of Agile
The CSFs are also important for Agile projects with a focus on change management, integrating customer wishes, focus on risk management, interdisciplinary project teams and project management. Other studies also highlight the points of self-organizing teamwork, a cooperative corporate culture, having a clear vision (and communicating this to all stakeholders) and the importance of good customer relationships.
Although there is a lot of overlap between the success factors of Agile and Scrum, the use of Scrum itself requires a number of other CSFs. It is important to work on the project and deliver results at a consistent pace. In addition, a lot of discipline is required from the entire team. We are in a continuous learning process. This requires a lot of perseverance and a lot of attention for the customer and the product. Scrum is all about delivering valuable results quickly. A more substantive critical success factor of Scrum is the Daily Scrum. The Daily Scrum consists of daily face-to-face consultation within the team. This is seen as an important condition for the success of Scrum.
In summary, most of the CSFs mentioned above are about attention and organization for the following two values from the Agile manifest, namely people and their mutual actions and cooperation with the customer. Communication, team building, feedback, involvement, rapid decision-making and support for management are the spearheads of several studies.
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