Understanding the structured processes followed by organisations prior to engaging in agile processes: A South African Perspective

There appears to be a lack of knowledge on the phases South African (SA) organisations go through while adopting agile methods. As a means to address this gap, this study uncovered empirical evidence on the phases SA organisations go through whilst adopting agile methods as well as the disparities between agile prescriptions and the way SA organisations actually implement agile methods. The data collected using a case study approach was analysed through the lens of Actor-Network Theory (ANT). The results reveal that there is no structured process for adopting agile methods and organisations go through various phases in their attempts to adopt agile methods. During the various phases, organisations face challenges which are culture as well as people related. Through this study South African practitioners could now be aware that before adopting an agile methodology, there has to be a common understanding of the problems at hand and the envisioned solution. The findings also inform aspiring adopters in South Africa that adoption of the methods does not have to be as prescribed. They are free to adopt only those aspects the organisations need most

Interaction Between Agile Methods and Organizational Culture – A Qualitative Study

Background: Agile practices have gained popularity in the 21st century. There is also a growing body of research on agile methods. While some earlier research on agile practices and organizational culture exists with the assumption that the optimal combination of agile practices and organizational culture exists, we examine how agile methods and organizational culture interact and are mutually adjusted. Method: To find out how agile methods and organizational culture are related in practice, we conducted 50 semi-structured interviews with software and embedded software developers from five Japanese companies and three software teams from Finland. Results: Adopting agile methods does not necessarily cause convergence of organizational culture toward democratic which seems to be most compatible with archetypal agile practices. Agile methods can be adapted to organizational cultures that are sometimes challenging to modify. We demonstrate that companies tried to fit agile practices into hierarchical organizational cultures, demonstrating that organizational culture can occasionally be viewed as an exogenous variable influenced firm-, product-, and industry-specific features. Also, it is possible to transform organizational cultures to democratic. The examples demonstrate how companies alter their culture in part through HRM techniques. It should be noted, however, that these efforts to conform to culture can have some restrictions. Conclusion: There is not a single ideal combination of agile methods and organizational culture, despite what some earlier studies suggested. The results show how organizational culture and agile methods interact and adapt to one another in different ways. According to several earlier studies, different organizational cultures may support different facets of agile methods. They do not presuppose organizational culture diversity; in that it goes beyond the notion of a one-to-one relationship between agile methods and democratic organizational culture. While implementing agile practices in various organizational cultural contexts, practitioners must consider how agile methods and organizational culture are interconnected

Empirical Investigation on Agile Methods Usage: Issues Identified from Early Adopters in Malaysia

Agile Methods are a set of software practices that can help to produce products faster and at the same time deliver what customers want. Despite the benefits that Agile methods can deliver, however, we found few studies from the Southeast Asia region, particularly Malaysia. As a result, less empirical evidence can be obtained in the country making its implementation harder. To use a new method, experience from other practitioners is critical, which describes what is important, what is possible and what is not possible concerning Agile. We conducted a qualitative study to understand the issues faced by early adopters in Malaysia where Agile methods are still relatively new. The initial study involves 13 participants including project managers, CEOs, founders and software developers from seven organisations. Our study has shown that social and human aspects are important when using Agile methods. While technical aspects have always been considered to exist in software development, we found these factors to be less important when using Agile methods. The results obtained can serve as guidelines to practitioners in the country and the neighbouring regions

Influence of organisational culture in the adoption of agile

Abstract: With the increasing rate of globalisation and customer expectations, organisations are adopting agile management methodologies. With the growing rate of adoption of agile methodologies, there must be value in using such methods. Findings show that one of the reasons why organisations use agile methodologies is the fact that it allows them to be flexible and enable them to meet increasing customer expectations. Further advantages of agile have been investigated; however, it was found that if the organisational culture is counter that of the agile principles the use of agile methodologies can cause more harm than good, and the culture, shall pose a hindrance to the use and adoption of agile methodologies. As organisational culture is an influential element in the successful implementation and adoption of agile methods, this investigation shall be to determine whether: the department in question has an organisational culture, which is conducive to the realisation of the benefits from the use of agile management methodologies. With the investigation of the culture present in the department, the department will be to able to make informed decisions on the use of agile principles with other projects going forward and thus resulting in a better outcome for the organisation and its customers. ..M.Ing. (Engineering Management

Comparative Study on Agile software development methodologies

Today-s business environment is very much dynamic, and organisations are constantly changing their software requirements to adjust with new environment. They also demand for fast delivery of software products as well as for accepting changing requirements. In this aspect, traditional plan-driven developments fail to meet up these requirements. Though traditional software development methodologies, such as life cycle-based structured and object oriented approaches, continue to dominate the systems development few decades and much research has done in traditional methodologies, Agile software development brings its own set of novel challenges that must be addressed to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of the valuable software. It is a set of software development methods based on iterative and incremental development process, where requirements and development evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams that allows rapid delivery of high quality software to meet customer needs and also accommodate changes in the requirements. In this paper, we significantly identify and describe the major factors, that Agile development approach improves software development process to meet the rapid changing business environments. We also provide a brief comparison of agile development methodologies with traditional systems development methodologies, and discuss current state of adopting agile methodologies. We speculate that from the need to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of the valuable software, Agile software development is emerged as an alternative to traditional plan-based software development methods. The purpose of this paper, is to provide an in-depth understanding, the major benefits of agile development approach to software development industry, as well as provide a comparison study report of ASDM over TSDM.Comment: 25 pages, 25 images, 86 references used, with authors biographie

Influential factors of aligning Spotify squads in mission-critical and offshore projects – a longitudinal embedded case study

Changing the development process of an organization is one of the toughest and riskiest decisions. This is particularly true if the known experiences and practices of the new considered ways of working are relative and subject to contextual assumptions. Spotify engineering culture is deemed as a new agile software development method which increasingly attracts large-scale organizations. The method relies on several small cross-functional self-organized teams (i.e., squads). The squad autonomy is a key driver in Spotify method, where a squad decides what to do and how to do it. To enable effective squad autonomy, each squad shall be aligned with a mission, strategy, short-term goals and other squads. Since a little known about Spotify method, there is a need to answer the question of: How can organizations work out and maintain the alignment to enable loosely coupled and tightly aligned squads? In this paper, we identify factors to support the alignment that is actually performed in practice but have never been discussed before in terms of Spotify method. We also present Spotify Tailoring by highlighting the modified and newly introduced processes to the method. Our work is based on a longitudinal embedded case study which was conducted in a real-world large-scale offshore software intensive organization that maintains mission-critical systems. According to the confidentiality agreement by the organization in question, we are not allowed to reveal a detailed description of the features of the explored project