The Contradiction of Agile Measures: Customer as Focus, but Process as Measured?

Performance measures are being used in the agile approach as a powerful tool to understand the customer\u27s impact of a software delivery. However, it is common to find measures related to the process instead of the customer, which would cause the team to forget the customer value delivery. This research study adopts a systematic mapping process to understand which agile approach is related to performance measures, what kind of measures are being used, and if the papers are focused on product measures or process measures. The analyzed articles showed that Scrum is the most frequently referenced agile approach that mentions measures. However, the review shows that the focus was on process measurements, while, despite the rhetoric about customer focus and agility, product measurements appear less important. This result opens the way for future research to explore the consequences of adopting performance measures that are related to this high emphasis on the process

Toward a Metric Catalog for Large-Scale Agile Development

Nowadays, organizations use agile software development to remain competitive in their frequently changing business environment. Inspired by the success of agile methods on a small scale, organizations have started to apply them in larger contexts. However, the limited scalability of agile methods is a problem. Metrics can be a success factor for achieving agility at scale, thus adopting them is promising. Most scaling agile frameworks provide few recommendations regarding metrics. Likewise, research on metrics in large-scale agile development lacks concrete guidance for metrics or their organization-specific adoption. To fill this gap, we propose two artifacts. We present the design of a minimalistic metric management fact sheet (MMFS) for large-scale agile development to support practitioners in using metrics in their organization-specific development environment. Furthermore, the MMFS is the basis for our metric catalog documenting 196 metrics identified in an expert study to provide a comprehensive metric set for scaling agile environments

Scaling Agility in Incumbent Firms: A Literature Review

Scaling agility as a process of applying agile concepts to more extensive parts of the organization promises incumbent firms to achieve the same benefits as their digital competitors. However, copying digital-born companies\u27 approaches seems problematic, as incumbent firms are distinct from their digital competitors. Thus, this research aims to consolidate what we know about scaling agility in incumbent firms. To answer this question, I conduct a structured literature review to understand scaling agility for incumbent firms better, resulting in the four dimensions of structure, methodology, governance, and dependencies with nine themes: coordination, processes, roles, effectiveness, risk management, budgeting, measurement, architecture, and culture/mindset. Moreover, the review develops six avenues for future research. With this, the literature review provides an integrative picture of scaling agility, enhances conceptual clarity, and helps practitioners by providing an overview to use in their efforts to scaling agility in incumbent firms

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

Shipbuilding 4.0 Index Approaching Supply Chain

The shipbuilding industry shows a special interest in adapting to the changes proposed by the industry 4.0. This article bets on the development of an index that indicates the current situation considering that supply chain is a key factor in any type of change, and at the same time it serves as a control tool in the implementation of improvements. The proposed indices provide a first definition of the paradigm or paradigms that best fit the supply chain in order to improve its sustainability and a second definition, regarding the key enabling technologies for Industry 4.0. The values obtained put shipbuilding on the road to industry 4.0 while suggesting categorized planning of technologies

Designing a Tool for Measuring IT Process Maturity in an Agile Development Context

This paper presents the design of a tool for recurring quantitative self-assessment of IT Service Management (ITSM) process maturity in an agile environment. Continual improvement of ITSM processes can be measured by performing a process maturity assessment, comparing the organization’s process performance against a best-practice reference set of processes. In this paper we report a project that has developed a quantitative measuring survey-based tool. The specific context for the research is a financial institution that has adopted agile development. This change brought on an increased need to monitor ITSM process performance, and a Design Science Research (DSR) project was launched to create an ITSM maturity assessment tool. The results show that a company-wide ITSM process maturity assessment can be established as a survey-based self-assessment, and that the aggregate scores from this self-assessment present a good indicator of the organization’s process performance, especially when complemented by a reference score. A key learning from the study is that the iterative DSR methodology made it possible to create a system that in good way measure ITSM process maturity

Scaling Agile: Approach for Defining Key Aspects of Multiteam Agile Software Delivery Systems (Research in Progress)

The need to scale agile approaches for software delivery within larger organizations and larger projects has led to a proliferation of agile scaling frameworks. Anecdotal evidence of the resultant implementation of these scaling frameworks shows varying degrees of success. Missing from this discourse is a holistic, framework-independent understanding of scaling agility. This research proposes an approach for defining key aspects of agile scaling. Using a Delphi method, we will work with an international panel of agilists representing the major scaling frameworks to determine challenges for scaling agile. These results will then be compared to the existing agile scaling research to determine convergence and identify gaps within the existing research. We will also compare the results to the emerging research that uses multiteam systems to help explain the agile scaling phenomenon. These comparisons will provide a means to gauge the relevance of existing literature to practitioner identified needs. The results of the study will provide practitioners a framework-independent understanding of agile scaling for large organizations and projects and provide scholars a clear direction to support future research

On agile metrics for operations management: measuring and aligning agility with operational excellence

High-quality performance in Operations Management has been measured through different Excellence frameworks, with special emphasis on Operational Excellence models. By allowing to track performance indicators, identify improvement opportunities, and tackle operational limitations, such frameworks have proven their validity throughout the years. However, and despite their history of success, these frameworks remain based on almost the same principles and criteria that were defined when they were first being established, more than three decades ago. As change becomes central to the life of organizations, the ability to reconfigure operations becomes vital for success. However, the current takes on Operational Excellence do not consider the ability to change in their assessments. In a marketplace in transformation, this is perceived as a limitation and draws criticism to Excellence frameworks. In the face of this gap, we develop, deploy and analyze the results obtained by an Organizational Agility assessment framework that is aligned with Excellence in Operations Management. This paper presents this process and highlights the main results of bringing Organizational Agility together with Operational Excellence in the measurement and pursuit of superior operational performance.This work has been supported by national funds through FCT - Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/2019, as well as by PhD grant PD/BD/114149/2016