A survey study of critical success factors in agile software projects in former Yugoslavia IT companies

Determining the factors that have an influence on the success of the software development projects has been the focus of extensive research for more than 30 years. In recent years agile methodology of software development has become the dominant one for all kinds of software development projects. In this paper we present the results of empirical study for determining critical factors that influence the success of agile software projects which we conducted among senior developers and project managers from IT companies located in the former Yugoslavia countries within South Eastern Europe (SEE) region. This study is inspired by the similar study conducted 5 years ago (Chow and Cao, 2008). With this study we were not able to confirm the model developed in the previous study. Moreover it disconfirmed not only part of the factors, but very much questioned the whole scheme. However, we were able to shed additional light regarding agile software development in former Yugoslavia countries from SEE region as a reference region for investigating outsourced projects done in agile way.

► We use survey with 7 level Likert's scale to measure the level of agile project success based on critical success factors.
► We compare the results for former Yugoslavia countries to results obtained globally by previous similar study.
► We find discrepancy between our and previous similar study and discuss rationale behind it.