Assessing the Practice of Agile Project Management Methodology in Ethiopian Social Enterprises: The Case of Whiz Kids Workshop
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Date
2021-06-03
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
This document presents the research study carried out on the practice of agile project management in social enterprises in the Ethiopian context. Agile project management, even though it is not novel worldwide, in Ethiopia it is still new and is common only in software related projects. The motivation for this study is that the benefits of agile methodology in software industries can be replicated to other industries such as social enterprises which are peculiar forms of organizations gaining popularity especially in developing countries like Ethiopia. For this research, a social enterprise operating under the education sector called Whiz Kids Workshop was chosen. A qualitative as well as quantitative research approach was undertaken for this study with the intention to deeply understand the opportunities and challenges presented by adopting this methodology in a social enterprise setting and whether maximizing on the opportunities and minimizing challenges would bring about an improvement of the organizational performance. A descriptive research design was used for this study to describe how social enterprises implement agile project management methodology and detail the characteristics of agile practice in settings outside software. All forty nine employees of Whiz Kids Workshop were the target population for this study therefore a census was used to collect the data that was needed to draw results and conclusions. The data was gathered through survey instruments such as questionnaires distributed to the staff as well as through semi-structured interviews held with the management members who are championing the implementation of agile ways of working. Their response helped inform conclusions around maximizing opportunities through realizing benefits of agile such as efficiency and productivity and garnering positive staff attitude towards the implementation through consistent training, minimizing challenges such as working to improve on company culture. By implementing these harmoniously and monitoring the performance of the team regularly, agile methodology was found to bring about increased organizational improvement.
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Agile project management, agile ways of working, social enterprises