Transforming Management to Support Agile Development

Agile methods have been widely adopted in the software development industry. Efforts have been made to study how to adopt and tailor agile methodologies for various types of projects. However, studies have reported that many of the challenges that today’s agile teams face do not come from within their teams, instead, they mainly come from the interaction between agile teams and their business environment. Thus, being agile is not just a task for development teams; it needs to go beyond the team level and requires transformation at the management level. This study aims to investigate how management external to agile teams needs to be redefined and transformed in order to fully support agile development

Spartan Daily, June 1, 1939

Volume 27, Issue 148https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/2938/thumbnail.jp

Spartan Daily, June 1, 1939

Volume 27, Issue 148https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/2938/thumbnail.jp

Spartan Daily, June 1, 1939

Volume 27, Issue 148https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/2938/thumbnail.jp

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

AGILE–STAGE GATE MANAGEMENT (ASGM): NPD IMPLEMENTATION PRACTICES FROM GLOBAL FIRMS DEVELOPING COMPLEX, PHYSICAL PRODUCTS

Stage Gate Management (SGM) has been used successfully by global organizations to direct the New Product Development process (NPD) for years, recently a new variant of this venerable approach has emerged. Researchers and firms have begun to intersperse elements of Agile, as popularized for the development of software, to create an Agile – Stage Gate Management (ASGM) hybrid NPD framework. Agile practitioners believe in process waste reduction, an intense focus on customers, and the creation of nimble entrepreneurial project teams, which, for software products, has positively impacted development time to market, resource utilization, and market success, more generally, improved business outcomes. For NPD professionals responsible for physical products, not solely software, do these Agile tenets continue to produce results? With minimal available research, a Grounded Theory study was conducted to inductively create theory from the implementation of ASGM, specifically for firms that design, develop, and manufacture physical products. Twenty-nine experienced industry professionals were interviewed from four global companies which represented five distinct Business Units (BU) which competed in a variety of markets and industries around the world. From these interviews, a Content Analysis approach was employed to organize primary and secondary themes which illustrated NPD team practices. Additionally, a comparative multi-case study method further developed specific Agile/Scrum techniques implemented, the measures of business success realized, as well as, a new ASGM model for like firms. From this research, firms which developed physical products did not implement all Agile practices, only Team Interface, Product Demonstrations, and Specification Flexibility were uncovered. The cases did, however, subjectively realize an improved time to market, as well as, greater product success for projects commercialized using ASGM. Lastly, a new framework emerged which highlighted the unique practice of Agile behaviors earlier in the development process, but rigid, or SGM-like, activities closer towards product launch

The BG News April 22, 1969

The BGSU campus student newspaper April 22, 1969. Volume 53 - Issue 89https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/bg-news/3321/thumbnail.jp

The Ithacan, 1984-09-20

https://digitalcommons.ithaca.edu/ithacan_1984-85/1002/thumbnail.jp