Exploring barriers to agile methodologies implementation and mitigation strategies: a multi-method study

The necessity for business adaptability, responsiveness, and customer-centricity has led organizations to implement agile methodologies. But, as this approach was primarily created for software development, the business has been experiencing barriers to reaching a successful adoption. Therefore, this research aims to understand the obstacles encountered and which are the most relevant according to the professional¿s experience. The study comprises a literature review that establishes the academic background, a qualitative analysis through interviews collected from projects adopting agile in a large enterprise, and a quantitative analysis based on data collected through a survey from agile practitioners. The quantitative research is divided into descriptive statistics to understand the respondent¿s perspectives on the matter, followed by a structural analysis adopting SEM-PLS to know if the agile barriers impact project and business benefits. The results from the descriptive statistics indicated that the significant barriers are related to communication, organization, process, knowledge, team, social, and customer aspects. The structural model highlights the effect of the agile obstacles on project and business performance. The cause is mainly related to barriers regarding communication, team, and customer aspects. The summarized results support the business in defining accurate mitigation strategies to achieve a successful agile transformation. However, this research presents a limitation as it did not explore possible indirect effects between the barriers studied, which is a future research opportunity.