How Agile Practices Impact Customer Responsiveness and Development Success

Agile information systems development methods have become popular; however, which specific agile practice to use remains unclear. We argue that three types of agile practices exist--for management, development, and standards--which affect the customer responsiveness of software teams differently. We examine this theory in a field study of a large organization. We find that agile practices improve software team response effectiveness or efficiency, but not both. Agile standards do not improve response mechanisms but are still important to successful information systems development. Our findings help discriminating agile practices and yield insights into how information development projects should be managed.