Job-work fit as a determinant of the acceptance of large-scale agile methodology

The declaration of the Agile Manifesto in 2001 was hailed as a paradigmatic shift in the development of software systems. Initially, agile development was typically deployed in projects with a single team with fewer than ten members. Recently, a new kind of agile development has emerged for larger projects that may be referred to as large-scale agile methodology (LSAM). The taxonomy of LSAM is more enhanced and subsumes the Agile Manifesto. Based on the software development literature, the study investigates five important antecedents of methodology acceptance: perceived usefulness, compatibility, subjective norm, mandatoriness, and external support. As a result of the initial PLS analysis, the study introduces the notion of Job-Work Fit as a second-order construct composed of perceived usefulness and compatibility. Based on a survey of 123 respondents, the study finds that the construct job-work fit significantly explains the LSAM acceptance for large projects. Job-work fit also mediates the relationships between subjective norm and external support with LSAM acceptance. This research suggests that as the stakes become higher because of project size and agility, job-work fit emerges as the central determinant of LSAM acceptance. (C) 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.