Large-Scale Agile Transformation: A Case Study of Transforming Business, Development and Operations

Today, product development organizations are adopting agile methods in units outside the software development unit, such as in sales, market, legal, operations working with the customer. This broader adoption of agile methods has been labeled large-scale agile transformation and is considered a particular type of organizational change, originating in the software development units. So far, there is little research-based advice on conducting such transformations. Aiming to contribute towards providing relevant research advice on large-scale agile transformation, we apply a research-based framework for evaluating organizational agility on a product development program in a maritime service provider organization. We found that doing a large-scale agile transformation involves many significant challenges, such as having a shared understanding of the problem, getting access to users, and getting commitment to change that needs to be done. In order to overcome such challenges, we discuss the need for a holistic and integrated approach to agile transformation involving all the units linked to software development.publishedVersio

SAFe Adoptions in Finland : A Survey Research

https://www.agilealliance.org/xp2019/Peer reviewe

Influential factors of aligning Spotify squads in mission-critical and offshore projects – a longitudinal embedded case study

Changing the development process of an organization is one of the toughest and riskiest decisions. This is particularly true if the known experiences and practices of the new considered ways of working are relative and subject to contextual assumptions. Spotify engineering culture is deemed as a new agile software development method which increasingly attracts large-scale organizations. The method relies on several small cross-functional self-organized teams (i.e., squads). The squad autonomy is a key driver in Spotify method, where a squad decides what to do and how to do it. To enable effective squad autonomy, each squad shall be aligned with a mission, strategy, short-term goals and other squads. Since a little known about Spotify method, there is a need to answer the question of: How can organizations work out and maintain the alignment to enable loosely coupled and tightly aligned squads? In this paper, we identify factors to support the alignment that is actually performed in practice but have never been discussed before in terms of Spotify method. We also present Spotify Tailoring by highlighting the modified and newly introduced processes to the method. Our work is based on a longitudinal embedded case study which was conducted in a real-world large-scale offshore software intensive organization that maintains mission-critical systems. According to the confidentiality agreement by the organization in question, we are not allowed to reveal a detailed description of the features of the explored project

Enterprise agility: A Balancing Act - a local government case study

Austerity and financial constraints have been threatening the public sector in the UK for a number of years. Foreseeing the threat of continued budget cuts, and addressing the situation many local councils face, requires internal transformations for financial stability without losing the key focus on public service. Agile transformations have been undertaken by organisations wanting to learn from the software development community and bringing agile principles into the wider organisation. This paper describes and analyses an ongoing behaviour-led transformation in a district council in the UK. It presents the results of the analysis of 19 interviews with internal stakeholders at the council, of observations of meetings among senior and middle management in a five-month period. The paper explores the successes and the challenges encountered towards the end of the transformation process and reflects on balancing acts to address the challenges, be-tween: disruption and business as usual, empowerment and goal setting, autonomy and processes and procedures, and behaviours and skills. Based on our findings, we suggest that behaviours on their own cannot guarantee a sustained agile culture, and that this is equally important for enterprise agility and for large-scale agile software development transformations

Scaling Agile Beyond Organizational Boundaries: Coordination Challenges in Software Ecosystems

The shift from sequential to agile software development originates from relatively small and co-located teams but soon gained prominence in larger organizations. How to apply and scale agile practices to fit the needs of larger projects has been studied to quite an extent in previous research. However, scaling agile beyond organizational boundaries, for instance in a software ecosystem context, raises additional challenges that existing studies and approaches do not yet investigate or address in great detail. For that reason, we conducted a case study in two software ecosystems that comprise several agile actors from different organizations and, thereby, scale development across organizational boundaries, in order to elaborate and understand their coordination challenges. Our results indicate that most of the identified challenges are caused by long communication paths and a lack of established processes to facilitate these paths. As a result, the participants in our study, among others, experience insufficient responsivity, insufficient communication of prioritizations and deliverables, and alterations or loss of information. As a consequence, agile practices need to be extended to fit the identified needs

Strategy-Focused Agile Transformation: A Case Study

Strategic agility enables an organisation to sense and seize opportunities, manage uncertainty and adapt to changes. This paper presents one case study of a traditional charitable organisation taking a strategy-focused approach to agile transformation. Interview data was collected over a 13-month period through interviews at different stages and with different members of the transformation team and Heads of Department. This case study illustrates the challenges faced in such a transformation, and shows that strategic agility requires different time horizons to co-exist: a future vision, a medium term set of objectives and a short term performance monitoring perspective

Agile in the Era of Digitalization : A Finnish Survey Study

This paper was a Candidate for the Best Full Paper.Peer reviewe

Agile software development – Do we really calculate the costs? A multivocal literature review

Agile software development methods, in their various different forms, have become the basis for most software projects in today’s world. The methodology is present in almost all organisations today. However, despite the popularity, failure rates in software projects remain high. This paper identifies why agile methodologies have become so successful. In addition, the paper discusses certain factors that may often be overlooked in organisations that have adopted agile methods, such as rework, maintainability, adoption, turnover rates and the potential costs associated with each. The research carried out was a multivocal literature review (MLR). Multiple white and grey literature which was deemed to be relevant was selected. 32 contributions from white literature were selected for use in the review as well as 8 from grey literature sources. We find that while agile has many advantages, organisations may overlook the potential downsides of using an agile methodology. If not managed or implemented correctly, organisations risk taking on more hidden and expensive costs, for example in relation to rework. It is important that organisations are sufficiently trained in agile methods in order to succeed

How are agile release trains formed in practice? A case study in a large financial corporation

The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) is currently the most widely adopted framework for scaling agile in the software intensive industry. Despite this, there exists very little scientific research on the transformation process, as well as on the challenges and success factors of using SAFe in large-scale organizations. To start filling in this research gap, we conducted a case study by investigating the formation of agile release trains and the related challenges in a large financial organization adopting SAFe. We conducted 24 interviews with 27 interviewees, after which we analyzed the transcribed interviews using open and axial coding. The SAFe transformation started by forming a pilot train with teams that already had experience in agile practices. The success of the pilot led to the launching of new release trains. The forming of new agile release trains was challenging due to politics, difficulties in identifying the value streams, and the avoidance of a radical restructuring of the organization. These challenges led to opting for an organic way of transformation. Management organized several workshops to identify stakeholders for the second train. This was followed by team members choosing their teams based on skills and interests. The last two trains were formed using Lego workshops. The most significant challenges after forming the release trains at the case organization were struggles with existing projects and challenges due to inter-train dependencies.Peer reviewe