Agile versus traditional approaches to information technology project management: A comparison of critical success factors

In parallel to the emerging number of information technology projects in the companies and the development of new methodologies for the project management, choosing the right methods and knowing the influencers of project become critical for the companies. In order to finalize the projects successfully, factors effecting the project success need to be known by project professionals. Therefore, critical success factors concept is studied by different researchers. The main objective of this study is to analyze the critical success factors for information technology projects that are managed either with traditional and agile project management approaches and identify the similarities and differences of critical success factors between them. Critical success factors analyzed before by different researchers are searched in the literature and theoretical model and hypotheses are formulated based on the items found in the literature. In addition to success factors, project and company demographics are collected for 178 different projects. For analysis, multiple regression, ANOVA and t-tests are used. As a result, four factors are identified as critical success factor for information technology projects; project criticality, project team, project management process and project development process. Project team and project development process are identified as critical success factors for traditional project management. Project criticality and project management process are identified as critical success factors for agile project management. Details of findings and limitations are explained at the end of the study for academicians, researchers and project professionals.