Application of Agile Project Management in Kuwait Oil and Gas Capital Projects

The extreme challenges and substantial volatility associated with oil and gas projects reflect the need for a more flexible, responsive, and adaptable framework than the Traditional Project Management approaches usually found in the sector. This study explores Agile Project Management best practices merged into the existing frameworks within Kuwaiti’s oil and gas sector to create a Hybrid Project Management framework. It also investigates whether project managers understand this hybrid framework's value and believe it can benefit their organisations. This study applies explanatory sequential mixed-methods. The quantitative method surveys agile best practices and Oil and Gas projects' delay of 106 project management professionals. The quantitative method was followed by qualitative in-depth interviews with eight consultants who worked with both Traditional and Agile Project Management. The results suggest six best practices to reduce project delays and address project complexity: Iteration Planning, Retrospective Meetings, Daily Stand-Up Meetings, Communication and Collaboration, Enhancing Team Skills, and Solving Contractual Issues. Project delays are due to contractual problems, communication issues, poor planning and coordination, and a traditional approach. The findings further indicate that the identified best practices can reduce these delays by strengthening their weaknesses. The outcome of this study is a hybrid framework consisting of the proposed agile best practices, that are integrated as part of phase- gate project management. The framework includes the improved clarity and trackability of the waterfall methodology with the flexibility, smooth functioning, and adaptability of the Agile Project Management framework; hence the framework is recommended for Kuwait’s oil and gas sector. Potential implementation challenges are then identified, including project managers who may not possess the experience and expertise to apply the hybrid framework. These are countered with recommendations for the best possible application of the hybrid framework. In the future, the framework will be applied in real case capital projects development.