Issues in Information Systems

Volume 22, Issue 3, pp. 278-295, 2021

DOI: https://doi.org/10.48009/3_iis_2021_298-316

A systematic literature review: how agile is agile project

management?

Andy Behrens, Dakota State University, [email protected]

Martinson Ofori, Dakota State University, [email protected]
Cherie Noteboom, Dakota State University, [email protected]
Dave Bishop, Dakota State University, [email protected]

Abstract

As disruptive technologies and innovations continue to develop, the resulting change forces organizations
to consider adopting an agile mindset to move quickly. With an emphasis on an iterative and changing
project approach characterized by daily reactivity, communication, and flexibility, the Agile Project
Management (APM) approach is evolving to manage high uncertainty projects. A literature search was
conducted on the following academic databases: ABI/Inform, ACM Digital Library, EBSCO Host, and
IEEE Xplore. “Agile” and “project management” keywords were specified for the English language, peer-
reviewed articles published between January 2015 and March 2021 to answer the research question “How
agile is agile project management?” The findings of the study provide contributions to research and
practice on the state of evolution of APM.

Keywords: agile, agile project management, systematic literature review, agile software development, and
traditional project management

Introduction

As disruptive technologies and innovations continue, the resulting change forces organizations to consider
adopting an agile mindset (Project Management Institute & Agile Alliance, 2017). Organizations adopting
agile mindsets focus on an iterative and changing project approach characterized by daily reactivity,
communication, and flexibility. In a business environment characterized by rapid change and increasing
complexity, companies struggle to implement the strategies they need to generate and sustain
a competitive advantage (Boston Consulting Group, 2016). Agility should not be seen as a lack of process;
it provides the ability to adapt to diverse and unexpected situations (Santana Furtado Soares & de Lemos
Meira, 2015).

Agile Project Management (APM) is defined as an iterative approach that promotes customer inclusion,
adjusts to change, and develops a working product (Project Management Institute & Agile Alliance, 2017).
This approach influences how high uncertainty projects which have high rates of change, complexity, and
risk are managed. The aforementioned characteristics can present problems for the Traditional Project
Management (TPM) approach. TPM is based on the sequential conception and is driven by fully defined
requirements and deliverables (Project Management Institute, 2017a). The focus on the ‘Iron Triangle
Trap’ identifies time, cost, and scope issues, but does not identify the additional analysis required to identify
the issues (Wiboonrat, 2016).

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Consequently, as more definable work is automated, project teams are undertaking more high-uncertainty
work projects that require agile methods (Sanchez et al., 2019). These methods explore feasibility in short
cycles and quickly adapt based on evaluation and feedback. Therefore, the Agile Manifesto
(http://agilemanifeso.org) was created and provides an approach for high uncertainty work. It utilizes the
four values of 1.) Individuals and interactions over processes and tools, 2.) Working software over
comprehensive documentation, 3.) Customer collaboration over contract negotiation, and 4.) Responding
to change over following a plan (Project Management Institute & Agile Alliance, 2017).

APM corresponds to a mindset driven by values and principles. Its popularity has increased due to its results
on software quality and customer satisfaction. This has had an immediate impact on the job title of project
managers. They exist on a significant number of agile projects, and they play the role of mentor,
coordinator, negotiator, and process adapter (Shastri et al., 2021). Previous literature reviews have
investigated improving business processes using an agile methodology (Schmitt & Hörner, 2021), the
comparison of agile and waterfall project management methodologies (Thesing et al., 2021), and the
adoption drivers and critical success factors of agile project management (Noteboom et al., 2021). However,
previous reviews did not address the agility of APM.

This study uses the four values of agile to classify the literature to discover whether APM is truly agile.
Therefore, this study contributes to the body of knowledge on APM by offering guidance to project
practitioners and researchers on the current state of agility by investigating the extant literature on 'How
agile is Agile Project Management?' with comparison to the four Values of the Agile Manifesto.
Theoretically, the study contributes to the evolution of APM to manage high-uncertainty projects by
evaluating the literature for insight. The study also provides direction on the continued development of
APM to support agile methods and high-uncertainty work for the practitioner. The study provides a
theoretical background next, the research methodology is presented in the following section, the study
results to follow, and a discussion of findings. The article will conclude with a summary of findings and
implications for research and practice.

Background

The 14th Annual State of Agile Report (2020) reported the ability to manage changing priorities and project
visibility as the top two capabilities of Agile implementation. However, there are still adoption challenges
that continue to be related to organizational culture and resistance to change (14th Annual State of Agile
Report, 2020). According to the report, the top reasons for adopting agile were accelerated software
delivery, enhancing the ability to manage changing priorities, and increasing productivity. 84% of
respondents indicated that they were below a high level of competency with Agile. This indicates an
opportunity and the need for the improvement and development of APM.

Conboy (2009) provides a definition of agile that is widely cited, “the continual readiness of an information
system development method to rapidly or inherently create change, proactively or reactively embrace
change, and learn from change while contributing to perceived customer value (economy, quality, and
simplicity), through its collective components and relationships with its environment.” Organizations
achieve greater agility through attention to people, processes, and culture (Project Management Institute,
2017b). In an agile approach, basic outcomes are defined, initial targets are established, and the project
outcomes are consistently revisited and further refined using an adaptive process (Gemino et al., 2021). The
traditional approach is defined by linear and predictable project planning
practices designed to achieve a well-understood, achievable set
of objectives (Gemino et al., 2021). There is also a third approach defined as a hybrid approach that
combines both traditional and agile practices as described above (Gemino et al., 2021).

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Figure 1: Four values of APM agility

The Agile Manifesto and mindset have four values: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools;
Working software over comprehensive documentation; Customer collaboration over contract
negotiation, and Responding to change over following a plan (Project Management Institute & Agile
Alliance, 2017). The bolded areas are valued over the other items. The values shown in Figure 1 will be
used to classify the literature.

Methodology

This review employs the software engineering guidelines for performing and reporting systematic literature
reviews (SLRs). The guidelines, as proposed by Kitchenham and Charters (2007), are a common method
for conducting SLRs in software engineering and IS research. It offers a standardized and replicable
approach to evaluating and interpreting extant literature pertaining to the research question. The current
review uses this approach to summarize existing literature to identify the current position and gaps on agile
as a project management methodology. The ensuing section describes the three main phases of the current
review in accordance with the guidelines: planning, conducting, and reporting the study.

Review Planning
This process involves identifying the need for the review, commissioning the review, and specifying the
research question. The introduction and background sections establish these components.

Conducting the Review

The activities in this section include identifying the research, selecting the primary studies, performing
quality assessment, as well as extracting and synthesizing the information from the selected studies.

Research identification
Following the formulation of the research questions, the current following search query was developed to
gather relevant literature from ABI/Inform, ACM Digital Library, EBSCO Host, and IEEE Xplore
databases: "Agile" AND "Project Management". In collating the relevant articles for the review, English
language articles published in journals, books, or conference papers between January 2015 and March 2021
were sourced for the four values of the agile manifesto.

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Study Selection and Quality

Using a predefined strategy established by all four authors, two authors assessed the titles and abstracts by
independently evaluating a randomly selected study sample for inclusion or exclusion. This resulted in an
87.76% rate of agreement and a Cohen's kappa (Cohen, 2016) of 0.75, which represented substantial
agreement. The full text of the selected studies was then consulted for the four values of the agile manifesto.
The consensus method was used to solve any disagreements between the two researchers. Where a suitable
compromise could not be achieved, all four authors discussed the merits of the study with reference to the
study objective.

Data Extraction and Synthesis

An Excel sheet was created for extracting and synthesizing the literature. This assisted in reducing the
chance of bias in the report. The data collected from each study included the title, publication avenue, study
design, publication year, objectives, and the exact information relating to each of the four values. A
summary of the data collected is presented in Table 1. The following section describes the results of the
review which is the last activity specified by the SLR reporting guideline adapted from Kitchenham &
Charters (2007).

Results

Study Selection
The identification process resulted in the selection of 376 records from the initial electronic database search.
Duplicate records (36) were removed and 340 records were moved to the screening process. The exclusion
criteria removed 235 records and 105 records met eligibility criteria for full record review. An additional
36 records were excluded during the full article review and 69 records were included for analysis in the
study. A summary of search and study selection results is presented in Figure 2.

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Figure 2: PRISMA flow chart for study selection

Publication Statistics
The APM paper distribution by year indicates peaks and valleys during the collection periods. The low
occurrence of publications was in 2018 with six. The peak number of 16 articles occurred in 2019. As
displayed in Figure 3, there does not appear to be a trend in the number of publications per year. Figure 4
demonstrates the publication statistics by type of publication. Journal articles account for 68% of the
publications and peer-reviewed conference papers comprise 27.5% of the included results.
Case study and survey research were the most frequently mentioned study design components. The included
articles provided insight into a variety of investigative approaches to understanding APM as shown in
Figure 5.

Total
47

19

Journal Conference Other

Figure 3: Included publication by year
Figure 4: Included publication by type

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30
26
25
19
20

15

10 7
4 4
5 2
1 1 1 1 1 1 1
0
Total

Action Case Study Convergent Design

Ethnography Field study Grounded Theory
Interviews Interviews and Design Science Mixed Methods
Survey Survey and Interview Training Program
None Mentioned

Figure 5: Study design of included publications

The articles that discussed APM were the highest at 74%. There were much fewer articles discussing a
hybrid PM approach at 25%. These statistics are shown in Figure 6.

1%

25%
APM
Hybrid
None
74%

Figure 6: Percentage of PM approaches used in included articles

Table 1 lists the fully categorized articles with their respective PM style, and which agile value they have
met. All articles listed below were the included articles of our study. The citations list the authors and the
year each article was published. The PM style discusses which type of approach each author studied. The
following four columns focus on whether each article met one or more of the four agile values. Each x
details whether that value was met in the study. At the bottom of Table 1, the count of each agile value is
displayed.

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Table 1: Study design of included publications

Citation PM Interactions and Working Customer Response to
Style Individuals Software Collaboration Change
(Sanchez et al., 2019) Hybrid x x x
(Andrei et al., 2019) Hybrid x x x
(Şarlak, 2020) APM x x x x
(Stormi et al., 2019) APM x x x x
(Gemino et al., 2021) Hybrid x x x x
(Lill et al., 2020) APM x x x x
(Salman et al., 2021) APM x x x
(Khomyakov et al., 2020) APM x x x x
(Perlak, 2019) APM x x
(Mkoba & Marnewick, 2020) APM x x x x
(Luong et al., 2021) APM x x
(Bhatnagar & Grosse, 2019) APM x x x x
(Pareliya, 2019) APM x x x x
(Olteanu, 2018) APM x x x x
(Fitriani et al., 2021) APM x x x x
(Zasa et al., 2021) Hybrid x x x x
(Hussien et al., 2019) APM x x x
(Kurniawan, Adler, et al., 2020) APM x x x
(Marinho et al., 2019) Hybrid x x x x
(Ismat Soueid & Corá Martins, 2021) APM x x x x
(Ereiz & Mušić, 2019) APM x x x x
(Kerscher & Günzel, 2019) APM x x x
(Kurniawan, Budiastuti, et al., 2020) APM x x x x
(Hayat et al., 2019) APM x x
(Copola Azenha Flávio et al., 2021) Hybrid x x x x
(Thorgren & Caiman, 2019) APM
(Vahanvati & Mulligan, 2017) Hybrid
(Pool et al., 2019) APM x x x
(Lei et al., 2017) APM
(Jørgensen, 2016) None x x
(Gaudenzi & Christopher, 2016) APM x
(Batra, 2017) Hybrid x x x
(Taylor, 2016) Hybrid x
(Gheorghe et al., 2017) Hybrid x
(Higuchi & Nakano, 2017) Hybrid x x
(Alsari et al., 2020) Hybrid x x x x
(Hobbs & Petit, 2017) APM x x x
(Mirzaei & Mabin, 2017) Hybrid x
(Conforto & Amaral, 2016) Hybrid x x x
(Azanha et al., 2017) APM x x x x

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(Paterek, 2019) APM x x

(Cooper & Sommer, 2018) Hybrid x x x x
(Baham et al., 2017) APM x x x x
(Kassab et al., 2018) APM x x x
(Nerurkar & Das, 2017) APM x x x x
(Wiboonrat, 2016) APM x x x x
(Salaou et al., 2021) APM x x x x
(Lehnen et al., 2016) APM x x x x
(Dingsøyr et al., 2018) APM x x x x
(Serrador & Pinto, 2015) APM x x x x
(Meding, 2017) APM x x x x
(Siddique & Hussein, 2019) APM x x x x
(Cvetković et al., 2017) APM x x x x
(Friess, 2018) APM x
(Zhang et al., 2020) APM x x x x
(Sievi-Korte et al., 2015) APM x x
(Siddique & Hussein, 2016) Hybrid x
(Hoda & Murugesan, 2016) APM x x x
(Mishra et al., 2017) APM x x
(Tanner & Mackinnon, 2015) APM x x x x
(Lindsjørn et al., 2016) APM x
(Sampietro, 2016) APM x x x x
(Wells et al., 2015) APM x x x x
(Gablas et al., 2018) APM x
(Kaczorowska, 2015) APM x x x x
(Shastri et al., 2017) Hybrid x x x x
(Alahyari et al., 2018) APM x x x x
(Koch & Schermuly, 2020) APM x x x x
(Law & Lárusdóttir, 2015) APM x x x x
Count of the Four Agile Values: 59 46 54 53

Discussion

To answer our research question, how agile is agile project management? Our study indicates APM is agile
as defined by the classification scheme shown in Figure 1. The four values of APM agility were present in
38 of the 69 articles. 11 articles contained three of the values and 13 articles referenced two of the values.
One value was present in eight articles and one article failed to mention any value. In the following section,
we discuss the findings on APM agility from the literature review with a discussion on each value.

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APM Agile Values

Individuals and Interactions

The role of the project manager in APM is servant leadership which focuses on coaching anyone who needs
assistance, fostering collaboration, and aligning stakeholder needs (Project Management Institute & Agile
Alliance, 2017). This leadership enables a more in-depth focus on individuals and interactions that results
in a greater flow of values (Copola Azenha Flávio et al., 2021; Fitriani et al., 2021; Olteanu, 2018), emphasis
on rapid feature delivery to the customer (Nerurkar & Das, 2017; Pool et al., 2019) and self-managed teams
(Serrador & Pinto, 2015). The role of the project manager also extends to APM and the interactions and
individuals of the teams. It was found in teams to also improve collaboration, communication, team
dynamics, iterative planning, and multiple releases of usable projects (Pool et al., 2019). Serrador & Pinto
(2015) also found that neither the project complexity nor experience of the project team limited the project
success.

However, there are areas for improvement for APM. A trade-off between the short-term benefit of rapid
delivery and an increase in unplanned technical debt from quick agile responses may result in major
consequences if that the debt is forgotten and grows up to become a liability for the system maintainability
and scalability (Salaou et al., 2021). This also can cause teams to focus less on tools and processes. This
can consequently cause teams to neglect or minimize the importance of documentation.

Responding to Change
This systematic literature review suggested that 77% of research projects used adaptiveness to change in
their studies. Companies are faced with spontaneous market changes and they often have to shorten the
software product delivery and be more responsive to the customers’ demands (Olteanu, 2018). Customer’s
changing opinions on features increase the cost of updating artifacts under TPM and the impact on each
phase of the project as well as drive down customer satisfaction (Andrei et al., 2019). Understanding and
being adaptive to change enables managing agile projects more effectively and allowing for flexible
requirements. An exploratory study was completed by Pareilya (2019) showing that 41% of agile users
thought being adaptive to change was extremely important. 45% claimed in the Pareilya study that
adaptiveness to change is very important. In sum, 86% of the users thought that being adaptive to change
is important. 76.8% of the articles reviewed in this study implemented the response to change principle.

Adapting to change as an agility principle enables project management teams to react to or mitigate risks
that may cause going over budget, delays in implementation, and producing a different solution than
expected (Kaczorowska, 2015; Serrador & Pinto, 2015). In most cases, being adaptive to change helps
mitigate many barriers associated with the traditional project management style. For example, a project
team could benefit from continuous discussion (Andrei et al., 2019), maintain flow during the
transformation process (Fitriani et al., 2021), and understanding the importance of an agile project manager
(Hoda & Murugesan, 2016).

One of the key areas that responding to change comes into play is in regard to requirements. Agility is
defined by adapting to new conditions (Şarlak, 2020). Agile is a preferred approach when project
stakeholders expect significant changes in requirements (Gemino et al., 2021). Requirements change in
Performance Management Systems, like all systems, is inevitable, and agile is a methodological way to
respond to that change (Stormi et al., 2019). Another key to responding to change identified by Stormi,
Lain & Korhonen (2019) is adopting iterative and incremental work practices which support resilience in
the face of dynamic requirements. Finally, Gemino et al. (2021) point out that the team attitude toward
change is an important success indicator for projects embracing agile practices.

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Customer Collaboration
Law and Larusdottir (2015) summarize the definition of a customer as someone, company, or individual
that receives a product or service. Khomyakov et al. (2020) note that both plan-based and agile
organizations place a high priority on customer collaboration and customer satisfaction. In agile practices,
such as Scrum, the Product Owner is the representative of the customer and may pull in customers as needed
throughout the life of the project (Schwaber & Sutherland, 2011). Shastri et al. (2017) describe the
traditional project manager’s role with customers as one of negotiating requirements. Consequently, in a
hybrid approach, to gain the maximum benefit, it will be necessary to expand the traditional role to enhance
customer collaboration.

Working Software
Generally, it is accepted that APM evolved from software development practices and is predicated upon
incremental product delivery which grew from a rising need for faster yet adaptable software release cycles
(Highsmith & Cockburn, 2001). Rather than the top-heavy comprehensive documentation that characterizes
traditional project management, Zhang et al., (2020) found that reduced communication overheads,
increased concurrency, and increased personal ability created the right conditions for small self-organizing
teams to realize increased productivity and innovation towards systems creation. This effect was not limited
to small-scale software development teams. In large multiteam development where documentation is
generally required and advised, the literature demonstrated that upfront documentation came in the form of
intra- and cross-team expectations written in wikis. Additional documentation during and at the end of the
project was ensured through the iterative unit, functional, and integration tests (Marinho et al., 2019).
Further, progress towards working software was often achieved through multi-level coordination of
resources from impersonal modes, such as through instant messaging, to group modes, such as scrum of
scrums and frequent demos (Dingsøyr et al., 2018; Hobbs & Petit, 2017; Sievi-Korte et al., 2015).

Instinctively, APM as a project management practice is popular in software development cycles. The
current study found that in the context of APM, the idea of working software over comprehensive
documentation – as enshrined in the Agile Manifesto – transcends its literal meaning. Several studies found
ways to implement APM outside of software development cycles. Mirzaei & Mabin (2017) demonstrated
that achieving cadence and delivering incremental value through APM was viable for public sector policy
development. The current study found several such applications of APM resulted in the iterative delivery
of “working software” in various non-software industries such as real estate, electrical engineering, and
even disaster management (Baham et al., 2017; Fitriani et al., 2021; Gheorghe et al., 2017; Pareliya, 2019;
Vahanvati & Mulligan, 2017). From APM’s starting point in 2001, there has been constant hope and support
for the move to agility. As the pace of technology adoption continues to increase, the need to respond
quickly becomes paramount. APM will continue to evolve to meet additional demand.

Limitations
One of the limitations of this research is that more breadth than depth was covered. This study considered
four agile values that are broad in nature. There are twelve principles of agile studies that could be applied
to a similar research project to get a more in-depth view of the current state of research. We also cannot
claim that this was an exhaustive search of research articles. The coding of the results from the literature as
system reviews is also threatened by misclassification. This was minimized by having two authors code the
studies with input from the other two authors to resolve any issues with the classification. Another limitation
is the use of academic subscription databases as our only source. Since APM is practical, including only
peer-reviewed articles may have unintentionally biased this study toward the academic settings by ignoring
periodicals and professional publications such as PMI.

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Although 74% of articles were classified as agile we do recognize that some papers and studies were single
value-focused. Although they do not touch on all four values, we felt they contributed to the agility of APM
overall.

Conclusion and Future Research

As technology innovation is expected to accelerate, our study investigated the literature to determine how
agile is APM? The evidence shows that APM is making strides towards becoming agile. There is still some
work to do before APM becomes truly agile. Authors must continue to address agility using the four
principles to ensure they are using APM and not claiming agility through a hybrid style. The study analyzed
and evaluated 69 articles to assess the agility of APM as measured by the existence of the four agile
values. The need for APM to continue to evolve and contribute to the success of high-uncertainty work
will continue to grow.

Future research could focus on a more in-depth review of the twelve principles of agile studies. This would
provide a more granular view on APM research to analyze how rigorous the agile methodology is being
applied. Researchers could also conduct a qualitative or quantitative study on APM implementing the four
values. From a qualitative perspective, a researcher could better understand APM and its application in
information systems projects. A quantitative study could analyze relationships and investigate how each
value could impact project success in an agile information systems project. Further, a framework could be
developed by researchers to guide project management practitioners to make sure they are addressing each
agile value when applying an agile methodology. Finally, researchers could investigate ways to optimize
APM for high-uncertainty work within high-growth technologies. Examples include but are not limited to
artificial intelligence, cloud technologies, big data, and analytics.

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