Effect of Human Factors in the Success of Agile Software Project: A Quantitative Study

Abstract

The Agile methodology has been growing in the software industry, which means data showing people are slinging code more than ever before. This helped lead me to investigate how human factors are impacting the success of Agile software projects. The primary objective of this research was to determine the relationship between human factors and the success of Agile software projects. This research was based on a combination of systematic literature review and survey research techniques to conduct a tracking and a tracing of the elements of Agile that resulted in team performance. This research was conducted in two stages. For the first phase, performed a theoretical study of the factors and challenges influencing the successful completion of Agile software projects; and in the second phase, an exploratory research by conducting a survey of 120 software developers about their current practices. As a portion of the conclusion for the published paper (listed below), it went on to identify 15 human factors that significantly influenced team performance. Those human factors consisted of personality, leadership, motivation, cognitive style, emotion, professional knowledge, IQ, work experience, capability, trust, social sensitivity, respect, social skills and formal education.The findings of this study would significantly benefit several stakeholders, such as software developers, organizations, project managers and other stakeholders as it provides them with an understanding into potential cross-cultural challenges, to increase the likelihood of the success of their Agile development projects. Having known that, this can be a nice reason to give to a business sponsor while trying to determine the types of projects you might like to pursue for your portfolio as a young professional, or to bring to some smaller businesses in order to help them jumpstart their understanding of how human factors are impacting their surrounding software development wardrobe or adding some supports to a first ever fidelity investment in probing more deeply into how individuals that otherwise largely agree on entering software applications, might go on to evolve into disagreeing about working with each other.