Investigating the environmental antecedents of organizations’ intention to adopt agile software development

Purpose: Agile software development (ASD) has emerged as an active research area due to its enormous growth in popularity. The innovative differences between ASD and traditional development include the use of fundamentally different procedures, organizational structures and people, yet organizations still attempt to embrace ASD. Apparently, the underlying factors arousing organizations’ intent to adopt ASD are not well known and have not been well explained in the extant literature. The purpose of this paper is to fill this gap for which the authors propose a conceptual framework based on the business process management (BPM) perspective to identify the environmental stimuli that affect an organization’s ASD adoption. Design/methodology/approach: Proposition for a methodology approach is used to construct a theoretical framework based on existing literature and theories in BPM. Findings: The framework recognizes external and internal environmental stimuli, including institutional isomorphic forces and interior enablers, such as top management championship, the culture type and resource readiness, which affect organizational ASD adoption decisions. Originality/value: This paper consolidates both the internal and external environmental aspects of the stimuli that lead to ASD adoption and offers insight into creating a suitable context for ASD adoption.