Choosing agile or plan-driven enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementations -- A study on 21 implementations from 20 companies
This research addresses the challenge for ERP practitioners in selecting implementation strategies, but it is incremental as it builds on known factors without new methods.
The study investigated how decision-makers choose between agile and plan-driven methods for ERP implementations, analyzing 21 projects from 20 companies, and found that their assessments did not differ significantly except for higher executive buy-in for process change and prioritization of low cost in agile projects.
Agile methods have gotten a good reputation for managing projects in many different sectors. A challenge among practitioners in the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) domain, is to decide if an agile method is suitable or not for new projects. This study investigates how decision-makers select between agile and plan-driven ERP implementation projects in relation to known factors from previous research. We selected projects that the decision-makers assessed as successful, but borderline, agile and plan-driven projects already implemented and let project managers fill out a survey consisting of key agile or plan-driven characteristics. We found that the assessment made by decision-makers did not differ on any aspects except higher executive buy-in for process change, and the prioritization of low cost in the agile projects. This study highlights the difficulty in selecting implementation strategy for a large part of the ERP implementations, and the data show that the decision-makers could not make such a decision at an early point in time without contextual knowledge.