An empirical study on the relationship between the use of agile practices and the success of Scrum projects

  • Authors:

  • A. César C. França;Fabio Q. B. da Silva;Leila M. R. de Sousa Mariz

  • Affiliations:

  • Center of Informatics -- UFPE, Cidade Universitária, Recife -- PE - Brazil;Center of Informatics -- UFPE, Cidade Universitária, Recife -- PE - Brazil;National Comission of Nuclear Energy, Cidade Universitária, Recife -- PE -- Brazil

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 2010 ACM-IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

In this article, factors considered critical for the success of projects managed using Scrum are correlated to the results of software projects in industry. Using a set of 25 factors compiled in by other researchers, a cross section survey was conducted to evaluate the presence or application of these factors in 11 software projects that used Scrum in 9 different software companies located in Recife-PE, Brazil. The questionnaire was applied to 65 developers and Scrum Masters, representing 75% (65/86) of the professionals that have participated in the projects. The result was correlated with the level of success achieved by the projects, measured by the subjective perception of the project participant, using Spearman's rank correlation coefficient. The main finding is that only 32% (8/25) of the factors correlated positively with project success, raising the question of whether the factors hypothesized in the literature as being critical to the success of agile software projects indeed have an effect on project success. Given the limitations regarding the generalization of this result, other forms of empirical results, in particular case-studies, are needed to test this question.