Evaluating the impact of converting to Agile on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)

This research is written to evaluate the adoption of Agile project management in SMEs. It is an appraisal of Agile technological readiness level to know if it is always a positive result or not. Agile adoption is common in projects with high uncertainty which provides high rate of change, complexity and risk, while Tradition PM is common in projects that are well defined, reducing their complexity and risk. As Traditional PM organization face more uncertainty, they try to adapt to Agile methods to gain the benefits of Agile. For this reason, Agile has gained strong support from Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises, particularly in the healthcare, IT or software manufacturing industry, because of its flexibility and timely delivery of project product, but, there is not enough evidence to show that Agile adoption has resulted in a positive outcome in all cases. Also, there is not enough evidence of large-scale Agile adoption in non-IT industries like the Energy, Manufacturing, Aerospace, Agriculture, Construction industries etc. Hence, this work aims to provide more literature on Agile adoption in Non-IT sectors providing comparison of adoption performance across the various industries. The lessons learned is that organizations must be careful while they transition to Agile because the dual possibility of positive or negative outcome exists. The answer to the research question was answered using empirical data evidence; Agile success factors comparison against several industries was generated; A Machine Learning framework that can be used to predict Agile adoption performance in the future have been developed and need to be trained for better accuracy. Change management was also discussed, explaining how individuals cope with change. A change management framework was also developed and used to drive change within an SME organization, aligned with this research case study.