Exploring the Challenges in Transitioning from Traditional Project Management to Agile Project Management

For the past few years, agile methodologies have been hailed as the silver bullet that can successfully rectify the high project failure rate. Many project based organizations are now either considering or in the progress of introducing a more agile approach as a substitute for the more rigid, inflexible and control oriented traditional methodologies. A gap of knowledge has been identified on problems, hindrances and challenges that can arise during the agile transformation process. Accordingly, this study focused on exploring the challenges involved in adopting agile project management methodologies by organizations that followed traditional project management practices. In-depth interviews with experts and practitioners have been carried out to collect data for the study and analysed using coding techniques. Findings have illustrated the challenges in relation to the six key thematic areas, namely organizational culture, leadership, structure, management practices, work unit climate and individual and organizational performance. The weaknesses in traditional project management approach have been identified as the major motivational factor for adopting agile methodologies whilst organizational culture acts as the utmost challenge.