Coordinating Knowledge Work in Multi-Team Programs: Findings from a Large-Scale Agile Development Program

Software development projects have undergone remarkable changes with the arrival of agile development methods. While intended for small, self-managing teams, these methods are increasingly used also for large development programs. A major challenge in programs is to coordinate the work of many teams, due to high uncertainty in tasks, a high degree of interdependence between tasks and because of the large number of people involved. This revelatory case study focuses on how knowledge work is coordinated in large-scale agile development programs by providing a rich description of the coordination practices used and how these practices change over time in a four year development program with 12 development teams. The main findings highlight the role of coordination modes based on feedback, the use of a number of mechanisms far beyond what is described in practitioner advice, and finally how coordination practices change over time. The findings are important to improve the outcome of large knowledge-based development programs by tailoring coordination practices to needs and ensuring adjustment over time.Comment: To appear in Project Management Journa

Building lean thinking in a telecom software development organization: strengths and challenges.

The potential shown by Lean in different domains has aroused interest in the software industry. However, it remains unclear how Lean can be effectively applied in a domain such as software development that is fundamentally different from manufacturing. This study explores how Lean principles are implemented in software development companies and the challenges that arise when applying Lean Software Development. For that, a case study was conducted at Ericsson R&D Finland, which successfully adopted Scrum in 2009 and subsequently started a comprehensible transition to Lean in 2010. Focus groups were conducted with company representatives to help devise a questionnaire supporting the creation of a Lean mindset in the company (Team Amplifier). Afterwards, the questionnaire was used in 16 teams based in Finland, Hungary and China to evaluate the status of the transformation. By using Lean thinking, Ericsson R&D Finland has made important improvements to the quality of its products, customer satisfaction and transparency within the organization. Moreover, build times have been reduced over ten times and the number of commits per day has increased roughly five times.The study makes two main contributions to research. First, the main factors that have enabled Ericsson R&D?s achievements are analysed. Elements such as ?network of product owners?, ?continuous integration?, ?work in progress limits? and ?communities of practice? have been identified as being of fundamental importance. Second, three categories of challenges in using Lean Software Development were identified: ?achieving flow?, ?transparency? and ?creating a learning culture

Applying Agile Lean to Global Software Development

Although challenges of Global Software Development (GSD) are well known in the industry, practitioners and the organizations look for ways to improve results and overcome challenges. Companies have tried to implement many workable solutions possible to solve issues like poor communication, lack of trust, low morale and many other such issues prevalent in the distributed setting. With the success of agile, the methodology gained interest in leveraging its benefits to alleviate some of these challenges. Similarly, lean was also implemented in distributed software development to resolve issues. While each methodology provided some improvement in the results achieved in global software development, many issues persisted and the desired growth/results were not received. Recent years have seen an increased interest of applying a combination of agile and lean software development paradigms to resolve current industry issues in the area and meet the needs of rapid changing environment. This study aims to study the current practices of the combination of agile lean existing in the industry and how it can be utilized in the global software development. The study focuses on challenges faced to implement agile lean and successful sustainable implementation of agile lean in an environment of global software development

A case study of SME web application development effectiveness via agile methods

Abstract: The development of Web applications is an important focus of the modern information enabled organization – whether the Web application development is in-house, outsourced, or purchased as ‘commercial-off-the-shelf’ (COTS) software. Traditionally Web application development has been delivered via the dominant waterfall system. The waterfall system relies upon well-defined governance structures, linear phases, gating, and extensive reporting and sign-off documentation. An increasing number of development stakeholders criticise the waterfall system for web application development. The criticisms include a disproportionate focus on governance and process at the direct expense of flexibility and, most importantly, reduced productivity. One consequence of these criticisms is the increasing adoption of Web application development via agile-system methods. This agile-system approach centres upon smaller design teams, fewer development phases, and shorter development time tables

A longitudinal explanatory case study of coordination in a very large development programme: The impact of transitioning from a first- to a second-generation large-scale agile development method

Large-scale agile development has gained widespread interest in the software industry, but it is a topic with few empirical studies of practice. Development projects at scale introduce a range of new challenges in managing a large number of people and teams, often with high uncertainty about product requirements and technical solutions. The coordination of teams has been identified as one of the main challenges. This study presents a rich longitudinal explanatory case study of a very large software development programme with 10 development teams. We focus on inter-team coordination in two phases: one that applies a first-generation agile development method and another that uses a second-generation one. We identified 27 coordination mechanisms in the first phase, and 14 coordination mechanisms in the second. Based on an analysis of coordination strategies and mechanisms, we develop five propositions on how the transition from a first- to a second-generation method impacts coordination. These propositions have implications for theory and practice.publishedVersio

The Scrum Product Backlog as a Tool for Steering the Product Development in a Large-Scale Organization

Vesiputousmalli ja sen variaatiot ovat olleet laajalti käytössä ohjelmistotuotannossa. Näiden mallien vikojen korjaamiseksi, eli markkinoiden vaatimuksiin mukautumisen kohentamiseksi sekä evolutionististen toimitusten tekemiseksi, on syntynyt ketteriä ohjelmistokehitysmenetelmiä. Näistä eniten käytetty on scrum-viitekehys. Suomen Ericsson on ottamassa scrum-menetelmän käyttöön. Muutoksen tukemiseksi, tämä diplomityö tunnistaa product backlog -tehtävälistan asianosaisia sekä heidän tarvitsemaansa ja tuottamaansa tietoa. Kirjallisuuskatsauksen, tietoliikennealan yritysten vertailun, strukturoimattomien haastatteluiden (n = 6) sekä puolistrukturoitujen haastatteluiden (n = 11) avulla tutkimuksessa tunnistettiin asianosaiset ja heidän toimintansa eri päätöspisteissä. Pohjana tutkimuksessa käytetään yrityksen uutta päätöksentekoviitekehystä. Diplomityö esittelee taulukon avulla asianosaisten toimenpiteet eri päätöspisteissä nimenomaan product backlog -tehtävälistaan liittyen. On oleellista huomata, että eri asianomaiset tarvitsevat eri tietoa. Lisäksi eri vastuuhenkilöille sopivat erilaiset visualisointitavat. Näin ollen, työ esittelee myös viitekehyksen, jonka avulla visualisointia voidaan kohdentaa eri asianomaisille. Tutkimuksessa havaittiin kolme seikkaa, joita tulee kohentaa. Ensinnäkin, useat asianomistajat haluavat oman backlog -tehtävälistan. Toiseksi, tehtäviä ja vastuita siirretään useassa kohtaa toiselle henkilölle. Kolmanneksi, innovaatioprosessi on erillään uuden tuotteen kehittämisestä. Toisaalta, useita kaavailtua tapaa tukevia löydöksiä havaittiin kirjallisuudesta. Esimerkiksi, yrityksen tiimit ovat monialaisia, tuotevastuu on hajautettu useammalle henkilölle sekä uuden ominaisuuden sisältö on rajattu vastaamaan markkinan todellista vaatimusta.The Waterfall model has been widely applied in the software development. However, agile software development methods have emerged to enhance the adaptability to the changing market demands and to utilize evolutionary releases. The most widely adopted agile method is the Scrum framework. Ericsson Finland is implementing Scrum. To support the transition, the thesis identifies the stakeholders of the product backlog and the data the stakeholders demand and provide. With a simplification, it can be stated that the product backlog is a prioritized list of items to be performed to complete a feature. Based on a literature review including a benchmark of other telecommunication domain companies, open-ended interviews (n = 6), and semi-structured interviews (n = 11), the thesis lists the stakeholders and their actions at each decision point. The decision framework, which has emerged in-house, was utilized to structure the thesis. A matrix mapping the actions by each stakeholder at each decision point was formed. The primary data, which the stakeholders require directly and indirectly from the product backlog, are the velocity, work to be done, the date of feature completion, dependencies, costs, and business value. It is important to note that the stakeholders need the data on different levels and for different purposes. Hence, the feasible visualization of the data varies among the stakeholders. In addition to identifying the stakeholders and the requirements for data, the thesis points out three findings regarding areas to be enhanced. First, multiple stakeholders currently demand their own product backlog. Second, multiple handovers are conducted. Third, the innovation process is isolated. However, multiple findings supporting the current organizational thinking of the implementation emerged. For instance, the teams are cross-functional, the product ownership responsibility is shared, and the scope of a new feature is optimized to not to include additional functionality that the market does not demand

The impact of education and training in large-scale agile transformation

Abstract. Large-scale agile has become a very popular approach for big companies in the past ten years. There are many different frameworks on how to handle large product development units in an agile way. Many companies have divided their units geographically to several countries and multiple development teams may work together with the same product. Due to the complexity of these large companies, organizations have implemented large-scale agile frameworks to help and make processes coherent. Transformation process in large-scale agile companies is long-term and time-consuming process. It is a long process where management must proceed multiple actions to get the large-scale agile framework to work in the organization. One of these actions is training the employees of the organization. This thesis literature review is based on prior research of agile software development, large-scale agile transformation, and Scaled Agile Framework. Literature review based on these three topics gives core to the research part. There was one case organization in this study which was in the middle of the transformation process during this study. This research studies the case organization’s training processes and competence of the employees related to large-scale agile. This research used the case study approach. Baseline data was collected from the case organization’s employees by using quantitative questionnaires and qualitative interviews. This study provided answers for the case organization on how the training can be handled during the transformation process. Study produced proposals on how to improve employees’ training paths in the case organization. Training plays a crucial part in the transformation process. Managers must prepare, plan, and set clear goals for the training paths. Every employee must get the large-scale agile training during the transformation process. With proper planning organizations can avoid transformation failures

Scrum in Practice: an Overview of Scrum Adaptations

Agile software development practices have gained widespread acceptance and application across all industries. Scrum, as one of the most widely used agile methods, has been adopted in countless organizations. However, while there is an understanding that practitioners rarely apply Scrum by the book , only little research addresses the actual adaptations and modifications that are made to fit Scrum to real world requirements: whether it is to solve methodological drawbacks, to fit the method to specific contextual constraint, or to add additional value to the method by augmentation or combination with other tools and methods. To get an overview of the proposed adaptations and their implications, this study presents a systematic review of literature reporting on challenges and motivations that lead to modifications of the Scrum method. Based on 31 relevant studies we extract seven distinct motivations for modifying Scrum, as well as six generic solution strategies to adapt the method

Finnish Enterprise Agile Transformations : A Survey Study

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