Success and Failure Factors for Adopting a Combined Approach - A Case Study of Two Software Development Teams.

The combination of Agile, User-Centered Design and Lean Startup has emerged as a solution for teams that are struggling with lack of user involvement and delivering products that fulfill stakeholder needs. Adopting such a development approach involves several factors, some of which can assist or hinder the adoption process. Currently, the literature reports on studies on such factors, but only for agile-only methods. Motivated by this knowledge gap, our goal is to map the success and failure factors of a combined approach adoption. We conduct a case study with two software development teams from a large organization transitioning to the combined approach. We used semi-structured interviews and focus group sessions to collect data. Our findings show five success factors categories (e.g., team engagement, technical aspects) and one failure factor category (team autonomy at risk), along with several argumentation points suggested by the teams to argue against a company policy perceived to be a very impactful failure factor. This study contributes to academic literature by reporting on success and failure factors of a combined approach transformation, and could be used as a starting point in defining tools (e.g., maturity models) to aid organizations in transitioning to the combined approach.