Scaling agile on large enterprise level – systematic bundling and application of state of the art approaches for lasting agile transitions

International audienceOrganizations are looking for ways of establishing agile and lean process for delivery. Many approaches exist in the form of frameworks, methods and tools to setup an individual composition for a best fit. The challenge is that large organizations are heterogeneous and diverse, and hence there is no "one size fits all" approach. To facilitate a systematic implementation of agile and lean, this article proposes a transition kit based on abstraction. This kit scouts and bundles state of the art methods and tools from the agile and lean community to align them with governance and compliance aspects of the specific enterprise. Coaching of the application of the transition kit ensures an adequate instantiation. The instantiation handles business domain specific aspects and standards. A coaching governance ensures continuous improvement. An example of the systematic application of the transition approach as well as its scaling is demonstrated through its application in the Volkswagen Group IT

HOW CAN SCRUM BE SUCCESFUL? COMPETENCES OF THE SCRUM PRODUCT OWNER

For decades a structured development process was followed when developing software. However, the suggested predictability of such an approach has long been proofed erroneous and in its place, more flexible methods have been suggested. Such agile methods are less structured and trust in the creativity of the development team in countering unpredicted events and realizing a solution. Currently one of the most popular agile methodologies is Scrum. There are only three roles in Scrum: the development team, the Scrum master and the product owner. As the product owner is responsible for maximizing the value of the product and the work of the development team, this role is key in the success of Scrum. However, the competences needed by the product owner are unclear. Based on this the research question underlying this study is: Which competences of the Scrum product owner are related to team effectiveness and stakeholder satisfaction? In order to answer this question empirical data was collected from 141 employees in organizations in the Netherlands. To analyse the data, we have conducted correlation analyses, t-tests and regression analyses. The most important findings are that the competences ‘Relationship management’ and ‘User support’ are the main predictor for both Team effectiveness as Stakeholder satisfaction

How Scrum Adds Value to Achieving Software Quality?

Scrum remains the most popular agile software development method implementation for a variety of reasons; one important motive is to improve software quality. Yet many organizations fail to achieve quality improvements through the use of Scrum, and existing research sheds little light on the value-add of Scrum for software quality. More specifically, (1) how notions of software quality among Scrum practitioners relate to established quality perspectives, (2) how Scrum helps teams to achieve higher software quality and (3) why some teams fail to meet the objective of higher quality. We addressed these gaps through a two-phased qualitative study based on 39 interviews and two in-depth case studies. We find that Scrum practitioners emphasize established notions of external quality comprising of conformity to business needs and absence of defects, while they also value internal quality, especially sustainable software design. Our results show that Scrum helps teams achieve both dimensions of quality by promoting some social antecedents (collaboration, psychological safety, accountability, transparency) and process-induced advantages (iterative development, formal inspection, and adaptation). Our findings unveil how these factors contribute to achieving software quality and under what conditions their effects can fail to materialize. These conditions include inconsistent Scrum implementations, cultural constraints, team tensions, and inaccessibility of end-users. In addition, the complexity of the project aggravates the impact of these conditions. Taken together, these findings show that Scrum can complement established quality assurance and software engineering practices by promoting a social environment that is conducive to creating high-quality software. Based on our findings, we provide specific recommendations for how practitioners can create such an environment

Large Software Implementation Project: A study of software development and project management literature

This study focuses on large scale software delivery, where development is done on top of an existing system or parallel to it. This thesis aims to answer to the question: How to implement a large scale custom solution? Large scale projects take longer than smaller projects to implement and usually they are done in more than in one release. The application’s life-cycle is also planned to last up to decades. Large projects also need special project management skills, executive support, internal investments, strategical vision as well as alignment between IT and business. Large projects are usually complex and have several dependencies. This study also explains what issues projects usually have and what are the constrains of legacy systems and data migration. Different eras of IT systems are also presented as well as reasons why companies should invest to IT solutions. Waterfall model and Agile methodology fundamentals and background are presented shortly. From Agile methodology Scrum and SAFe frameworks are presented as examples. Keywords: Legacy system, Data Migration, Software implementation, project management, COTS, Agile development, Waterfal

Agile Stage-Gate Management (ASGM) for physical products

We present a qualitative study of Agile Stage-Gate Management (ASGM),: a hybrid new product development methodology that combines Agile and Stage-Gate Management (SGM) approaches for the coordination of new product development. When applied to software projects, Agile is expected to deliver reduced development times, improved resource utilization, and greater financial success. We examine whether ASGM practitioners realize similar outcomes in a sample of global firms developing complex electro-mechanical products (e.g., automobile components, railway propulsion systems, and medical devices). Our grounded theory approach articulates an understanding of ASGM through extensive interviews of experienced professionals. Our thematic analysis supports many expected benefits (i.e., speed to market, innovation enabling), but also does not encourage others, and reveals new pitfalls that deserve recognition (i.e., resource inefficiency). ASGM is not a panacea for all product development. Overall, physical product firms adopting this method can expect reduced development times and higher levels of innovation but will expend more resources to complete development projects, but a dichotomy exists. Physical product developers using ASGM experience a negative impact on project resource efficiency due to the need for dedicated resources, frequent product demonstrations, and duplicative management structures

IT Governance and Organizational Agility: A Study based on Platform Organizing Logic Perspectives

Managing IS changes is critical for IT governance decisions. Thus, firms should be concerned IT agility in order to respond to uncertain changes in a dynamic environment. In this case study, we analyze the course of IT governance decisions to understand how the case company uses IT to enable organizational agility. Further, we adopt platform organizing logic perspectives to identify factors associated with this issue. These factors are classified as collaboration requirements and cohesion forces. We also identify four key principles used by the case company for making their IT governance decisions to sustain their IT agility: balance between collaboration requirements and cohesion forces, autonomy of IS integration and scalability, simplification of business processes by digitized process capital, and entrepreneurial alertness for absorbing new IT capabilities. These findings illustrate how to apply platform organizing logic to IT governance decisions and also respond to the call for research in reframing the role of IT in shaping organizational agility through digital options

Management Methods for Complex Projects

This freely available project management eBook is the start of your journey in the field of complex project management methodologies, introducing you to some of the core methods, processes and tools as recognised by the project management discipline. This eBook lays out methodologies such as XP, Agile, Scrum, Kanban, Six Sigma, PRINCE2, Waterfall, PRiSM, Soft Systems Methodology as well as introducing Project Design as a method so you can leverage the right project management approach. This eBook will be of value to students, practitioners, and businesses in Australia and overseas seeking professional development in the field of project management methodologies