Antecedents of Product Owner Preference for Agile Software Development.

As Product Owners on software development projects, our participants clearly preferred agile as the software development method of choice. We used a Grounded Theory approach to explore the interview data. Through our data analysis we discovered eight factors that influence preference for agile. Product Owner preference for agile methods is identified as the core category. The eight supporting factors are: customer representation, communication, collaborative empowerment, incremental approach, increased accountability, scope dynamics, and create valuable products. We relate these factors to existing literature to show that our participants' experiences and beliefs resonate with the current body of knowledge and we extend the literature by identifying antecedents of preference. This novel combination of field discovered factors provides a unique perspective to information systems development.