Adapting funding processes for agile IT projects: an empirical investigation

Abstract

Agile software development that provides software development organizations, the ability to respond to changes in turbulent business environments, has been gaining wide adoption. Agile software development projects are characterized by ‘just enough’ planning and lack of upfront commitment to scope, cost, and schedule. These characteristics pose conflicting demands on managers responsible for making funding decisions, because traditional approaches to funding IT projects are often based on well-defined scope, cost, and schedule. These conflicts demand the adaptation of traditional funding processes to suit to agile projects. We draw from Adaptive Structuration Theory to understand the nature of conflicts between traditional IT project funding processes and the dynamic nature of agile projects, and how these conflicts are addressed by practices that are appropriated in the process of social interaction between funding decision makers and development teams. On the basis of a multisite case study, we present a framework that explains how organizations adapt traditional IT funding approaches to accommodate the unique characteristics of agile IT projects.

Keywords:

• agile development
• IT funding
• adaptive structuration theory

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lan Cao

About the authors

Lan Cao is an Associate Professor of Information Technologies and Decision Sciences at Old Dominion University. She received her Ph.D. degree from Georgia State University. Her major research interests are agile software development and software process simulation and modeling. Her work has appeared in several journals including ISR, EJIS, JAIS, ISJ, DSS among others.

Kannan Mohan

Kannan Mohan is an Associate Professor of Computer Information Systems at Baruch College. His research interests include agile development, product family development, and sustainability. He received his Ph.D. in computer Information Systems from Georgia State University.

Balasubramaniam Ramesh

Balasubramaniam Ramesh is a Board of Advisors Professor of Computer Information Systems at the Georgia State University, and studies requirements engineering and traceability in systems development, agile software development, and knowledge management. His work appears in several leading journals including MIS Quarterly, ISR, JMIS, EJIS, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, ACM Transactions on MIS, JAIS, ISJ, DSS among others.

Sumantra Sarkar

Sumantra Sarkar is a Ph.D. student at J. Mack Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University. He has an MS in Information Systems, MBA in Operations Research, and holds PMP and CISA certifications. He is also a certified ISO 20000 Auditor. He has held senior management positions in IT organizations of large multinational corporations. His work has appeared in IEEE IT Professionals and several conferences.