The Impact of Agile Development Practices on Project Outcomes

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article is within the scope of the journal.

The topic of the work is interesting and topical.

It is well written and structured. It is easy to read.

Regarding the content. The experiment carried out is correctly designed, the results are clearly explained and discussed. The results obtained are interesting, original and represent an advance in the area of knowledge.

However, some improvements should be made:

a) The state of the art should be extended.

b) In the discussion, the comparison with other similar works should be deepened to show the advances and limits of the work carried out.

c) In the conclusions section, it should be made clearer what the scientific contribution of the work is.

d) Materials should be better explained descriptively.

Author Response

Thank you for you valuable feedback. We have made some changes as per your comments.

a) The state of the art should be extended.

More details on the study has been added 

b) In the discussion, the comparison with other similar works should be deepened to show the advances and limits of the work carried out

Comparison with the similar study has been made

c) In the conclusions section, it should be made clearer what the scientific contribution of the work is.

 This section has been extended

d) Materials should be better explained descriptively.

More details is added in the paper.

Please see the updated version of the paper.

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors, 

   I found a very nice paper. You can find minor suggestion in the attached file. 

Concerning the general overview I think that would be nice to detail in the paper also the configuration of the organization concerning the geographically distribution of people involved in the project. 

I see in the very  large project that often the main challenge, not only for communication but also for the managing of activities, is that people are quite  far each other (e.g. not easy stand up, specially in case of jet lag). 

Another important factor is when a project is built by more than one organization, and then each organization can adopt its model and practice but eventually you need to put all together before the release. Would be interesting to understand what methodologies the developer teams, integration teams, but also the project managers implement in order to satisfy the owner requirements. But of course these factor can be inserted for a future study which I would encourage to do, and I will very interested to see the results.

Thanks a lot. 

Best Regards

Vito  

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you for your positive comments. We have updated the document as per the comments.

Would be interesting to understand what methodologies the developer teams, integration teams, but also the project managers implement in order to satisfy the owner requirements. But of course these factor can be inserted for a future study which I would encourage to do, and I will very interested to see the results.

The future research section is updated as per the comments.

Other changes suggested in the Pdf file has been addressed.

Please see the updated version of the paper.

Reviewer 3 Report

This paper analyzes the impact of various Agile practices on software development project results.

According to the ever-increasing popularity of Agile development approaches, the topic addressed by this paper is very relevant. In this respect, a study which investigates the impact of certain practices in achieving project’s objectives is relevant for many practitioners and researchers in the field.

The paper is well structured and easy to read. The research methodology is properly outlined and the research question is clearly stated.

In this respect, an online questionnaire has been used to gather information about practices used in various projects. Specifically, questions have been proposed to identify challenges and issues regarding communications among team member and with the customer.

My main concern is related to the real value this contribution provides. Despite the above-mentioned premises, the findings authors summarize are limited to the correlation between the number of adopted practices and the increasing/decreasing tendency of given challenges. As an example (see lines 196-198): “…if there were an increase in the number of practices used in

the project there tended to be a decrease in challenges within the development team

members.”

 In my opinion the summarized findings/conclusions are too much generic and fail to provide guidance/suggestions in using the investigated practices. In this respect a more refined study should consider e.g., the impact of specific practices on the project results.

Moreover, I agree that the correct application of a good methodology can mitigate the impact of each person's (potential) inappropriate or somehow negative actions on the project success. On the other hand, personal skills, competencies and attitudes might impact on projects’ results despite the adopted practice/methodology.

As an example, difficulties in communicating within the team or with customers might be due to the disposition/nature/behavior of the persons involved in the project rather than to the application of a given practice.

In this context, did authors investigate the potential bias/impact of personal skills/attitudes to the addressed issues?

As stated by authors, the study discussed in this paper is part of a larger work (line 279). In my opinion, to make the paper convincing and valuable, methods and results of such a larger study should be taken into consideration to propose an extended version of the proposed contribution.

As minor issues, the paper requires to be spell-checked and the layout of some tables needs to be revised:

Line 35: This study is explores

Line 51: stress at work, *I*ntegrity and…

Line 54: practises

Line 279: study. *i*n this

Table 1: a raw list of practices provides a limited usefulness to readers, especially those not familiar with the agile paradigm. I would suggest to write the list in a single column and add a second column with a brief definition of each practice.

Figure 1: Please revise the figure layout: x- and y-axis labels are overlapped/too close to

axis values

Table 7: the caption position should be revised

Various tables:

1.     the column width should be enlarged to wrap all the text in a single line.

2.     please check the uniformity of the adopted font

Author Response

Thank you for your valuable feedback. We have revised the paper as per your feedback.

My main concern is related to the real value this contribution provides. Despite the above-mentioned premises, the findings authors summarize are limited to the correlation between the number of adopted practices and the increasing/decreasing tendency of given challenges. As an example (see lines 196-198): “…if there were an increase in the number of practices used in

the project there tended to be a decrease in challenges within the development team

members.”

 In my opinion the summarized findings/conclusions are too much generic and fail to provide guidance/suggestions in using the investigated practices. In this respect a more refined study should consider e.g., the impact of specific practices on the project results.

We have expanded the conclusion section. Please have a look.

As an example, difficulties in communicating within the team or with customers might be due to the disposition/nature/behavior of the persons involved in the project rather than to the application of a given practice.

We agree. We have expanded the conclusion section to address this.

Line 35: This study is explores

Line 51: stress at work, *I*ntegrity and…

Line 54: practises

Line 279: study. *i*n this

Completed 

Table 1: a raw list of practices provides a limited usefulness to readers, especially those not familiar with the agile paradigm. I would suggest to write the list in a single column and add a second column with a brief definition of each practice.

Thank you. We have updated the table as per your suggestion.

Figure 1: Please revise the figure layout: x- and y-axis labels are overlapped/too close to

axis values

Completed

Table 7: the caption position should be revised

Various tables:

1. the column width should be enlarged to wrap all the text in a single line.
2. please check the uniformity of the adopted font

Completed

Please see the updated version of the paper.

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

In this revised version, authors have taken into consideration the various reviewers’ suggestions and the paper has been improved.

As regards the concerns I’ve underlined, authors have extended Section 7 (conclusions) to better point-out the research outcomes.

Authors have also fixed the identified layout issues and revised the text to remove all typos, as well.

In my opinion, the paper can be considered for publication in its present form.