During the data collection phase of the research, the researcher had to com- pile a list of information technology companies in South Africa. One of the problems experienced at the time when the list was being compiled was that the information technology sector in South Africa had no professional body representing its members.
As such compiling a list of information technology organisation in South Africa was a complex task. The researcher had to get in touch with various information technology associations, groups and forums including the re- searcher’s personal contacts in order to compile a list.
To complicate the process further the population of software developers in South Africa is currently unknown and this made it difficult to determine the sample size. However, in order to provide some form of statistics the re- searcher took to LinkedIn to determine the number of software development organisation in South Africa. The researcher conducted a search on LinkedIn using the criteria “software development” and refined the search to include
“South Africa” and the “Industry: Computer Software”. Figure 5-1 below shows the search results:
Figure 5-1: Picture showing the number of software development organi- sations in South Africa on LinkedIn. Adopted from LinkedIn (LinkedIn.com, 2015).
The results show that one hundred and sixty-five companies were listed on LinkedIn. It must be noted that LinkedIn is not a definitive source of soft- ware development organisations in South Africa.
Once the list was completed the researcher had identified a total of one hun- dred organisations (100). The researcher drafted a gatekeeper’s letter in line with the research ethics of the university and objective of transparency and voluntary participation (Refer to addendum 15 for the gatekeeper’s letter).
The benefits of the study were also outlined in the gatekeeper’s letter. Each of the 100 organisations were contacted and invited to participate in this re- search.
Out of the one hundred organisations (100) contacted only twenty-five (25) organisations indicated that they would participate in the study. The re- searcher had encountered the following problems while trying to secure par- ticipation:
Organisations regarded their practice of Agile processed as proprie- tary information and were reluctant to participate in the study.
Organisations were not practicing Agile processes and had to there-
Organisations were outsourcing their software development activi- ties and had to also be excluded from the study.
Gatekeepers who indicated that they were interested in participating in the study were required to complete a gatekeeper permission given letter (Refer to addendum 1). This process was completed via email or in person. The gatekeeper’s permission given letters together with the ethical clearance documentation were sent to the university’s research office for approval.
Once ethical clearance for this research had been approved (Refer to adden- dum 16) the gatekeepers were contacted via email and they were provided with the Survey Monkey link (Refer to addendum 14 for a copy of the ques- tionnaire). Furthermore, they were asked to pass on the link to the appropri- ate personnel within their organisations.
After the data collection process had begun the researcher noticed that some of the sub-questions on the questionnaire had been numbered incorrectly.
The incorrect numbering was not altered at that point in time because the survey was already published. Furthermore, the researcher felt that should the numbering need to be adjusted it would be done so in the fieldwork chap- ter of this study.
After a period of two months a report was extracted from survey monkey.
This report showed that the survey had a poor response rate. A follow up email was sent to individual gatekeepers asking them to remind the appro- priate personnel at their organisations to complete the questionnaire. There- after a subsequent report from Survey Monkey showed a total of 90 respond- ents had completed the questionnaire. However, of the sample of 90 re- spondents, five of them did not have experience with Agile and their records were excluded. The difficulties in securing responses and participation by organisations bare similarities to the challenges experienced by (Ramnath, 2011) when trying to secure respondents for his study.
A report by the IFC shows that a large part of the South African economy is driven by SMME’s (IFC, 2013). As such one of the possible reasons for the poor response rate is that their software development teams are relatively small. Furthermore, not all of the software development teams were using Agile methods.
After identifying these challenges, the researcher contacted the statistician to determine if there was sufficient data to produce meaningful results. Upon investigation the statistician had indicated that there was sufficient data to produce meaningful results. Bearing in mind that the research process had to continue the researcher extracted the data from Survey Monkey and sent the data through to the statistician for processing. Thereafter a report with the complied results was sent back from the statistician.
The next chapter of this study will present the results from the research find- ings in line with the aims and objectives mentioned in chapter 1 of this study.