Using Factor Analysis to Generate Clusters of Agile Practices (A Guide for Agile Process Improvement)

In this paper, factor analysis is applied on a set of data that was collected to study the effectiveness of 58 different agile practices. The analysis extracted 15 factors, each was associated with a list of practices. These factors with the associated practices can be used as a guide for agile process improvement. Correlations between the extracted factors were calculated, and the significant correlation findings suggested that people who applied iterative and incremental development and quality assurance practices had a high success rate, that communication with the customer was not very popular as it had negative correlations with governance and iterative and incremental development. Also, people who applied governance practices also applied quality assurance practices. Interestingly success rate related negatively with traditional analysis methods such as Gantt chart and detailed requirements specification.