Waterfall and agile information system project success rates-a South African perspective

Abstract

Even though software projects do add value to the organisation, studies reveal that some software projects are still failing at an alarming rate and do not always provide the anticipated value to the organisation. This has been the case for the last couple of decades. Software projects use predominantly Waterfall as a methodology. This raises the question whether new ways of working can be introduced to improve the success rate. One such new way is Agile as an approach to developing software. A survey was done to determine whether Agile projects are more successful than Waterfall projects, thus contrasting the old and the new ways of working. Some 617 software projects were evaluated to determine the success rate based on the methodology used. Success was measured on a continuum of five levels and not just the triple constraint. The results imply that Agile projects are more successful than Waterfall projects to some extent, but that there are still concerns that need to be addressed. © the author(s); published under a Creative Commons NonCommercial 4.0 License (CC BY-NC 4.0).