Outsourcing Agile Projects with Time-and-Material Contracts: A Trust-Control Duality Perspective

Although agile principles are widely adopted for information systems development (ISD), we know little about the use of agile principles in outsourced ISD projects, especially from a client perspective. Client organisations have been reluctant to adopt agile principles in outsourced relationships because of the traditional dominance of fixed-price contracting and lack of knowledge on creating client value without jeopardising supplier interests. Against this backdrop, we apply a trust-control duality perspective to understand and explain how a Danish government agency successfully outsourced an ISD project to a supplier based on agile principles and time-and-material contracting. Drawing on these findings and extant literature, we offer theoretical and practical contributions to the literature on outsourced agile ISD focused on managing such arrangements and on using a trust-control duality perspective to understand the client’s relationship with suppliers.