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

Skilful Coping with Unorder: Educating 21st Century Arts Leadership

This paper firstly addresses why innovative learning approaches are needed for 21st century leadership education in the arts and cultural sector, then moves on to a case study of how such approaches are being implemented in practice, in the Boosting Resilience project. The approaches taken here are characterised as involving a multi-disciplinary consortium of delivery partners; the use of constructivist pedagogy that draws on arts-based methods of delivery; a participatory and agile learning design process; and the incorporation of on-going evaluation activities, that are woven in to the process of design. The paper concludes with some discussion regarding the potential generalisability of approaches such as those employed on the Boosting Resilience project to arts and cultural leadership education more broadly

Agile Assessment Methods: Current State of the Art

Agility Assessment (AA) comprises tools, assessment techniques, and frameworks that focus on indicating how a company or a team is applying agile techniques and eventually pointing out problems in adopting agile practices at a project-level, organization-level or individual-level. There are many approaches for AA such as agility assessment models, agility checklists, agility surveys, and agility assessment tools. This report presents the state of the art approaches that support agility assessment

Challenges and Success Factors of Scaled Agile Adoption – A South African Perspective

Agile methods and Agile scaling frameworks have become a solution for software-developing organizations striving to improve the success of software projects. Agile methods were developed for small projects, but due to their benefits, even large software-developing organizations have adopted them to scale their software projects. This quantitative study was undertaken to deepen the researchers’ understanding of the critical success factors and challenges of Scaled Agile from the South African perspective. A simple random sampling method was used. Data was collected with the use of an online structured questionnaire and the response rate was 70%. The results reveal that customer satisfaction remains at the epicenter of adopting Scaled Agile methods. Lack of top management support remains the major challenge in adopting Scaled Agile. The results reveal some notable changes when it comes to the most adopted Agile scaling framework

Scaling Agile Methods

The purpose of this thesis was to give an impartial view on some of the prevailing scaling agile frameworks. As well as provide a general portrayal of how agile scaling is generally done and what it means. The thesis was compiled by reviewing material found online from various different individuals and resources. The thesis goes through the basic principle of scaling agile as well as few of the most prevailing frameworks supporting it. Chosen frameworks are also studied by reviewing case studies concerning them. The report showed that implementing a framework to scale agile might be challenging and often proper training and coaching is needed. The study also showed that frameworks have differences that need to be considered when choosing the one to implement. The report concludes that scaling agile already has and will continue to have an important role in software and product development. Some frameworks are better suited in some environments than others and some environments fit in multiple different frameworks.Tämän työn tarkoitus oli antaa puolueeton katsaus huomiota saaneisiin skaalautuviin ketteriin menetelmiin. Sekä tarjota yleiskuvaus siitä kuinka ketterän menetelmän skaalaus yleensä tehdään ja mitä se ylipäätään tarkoittaa. Työ on koostettu käymällä läpi usean eri henkilön ja resurssin julkaisemaa internetistä löytyvää materiaalia. Tutkimus selittää skaalautuvan ketterän mentelmän käsitteen sekä muutaman sitä tukevan viitekehyksen toimintaperiaatteen. Valittuja viitekehyksiä tutkittiin myös niihin liittyvien käytännön esimerkkitapausten kautta. Selvitys osoitti että skaalautuvan ketterän menetelmän käyttöönotto ja toteuttaminen voi olla haastavaa ja monesti oikeanlainen kouluttaminen ja valmentaminen on tarpeellista. Työ osoitti myös sen että viitekehyksillä on eroja, jotka pitää ottaa huomioon menetelmää valittaessa. Selvitys päättelee että skaalautuvat menetelmät ovat ja tulevat olemaan tärkeässä roolissa ohjelmisto- ja tuotekehityksessä. Jotkin viitekehykset soveltuvat paremmin joihinkin ympäristöihin kuin toiset ja jotkin ympäristöt sopivat moneen eri viitekehykseen

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