Spotify tailoring for promoting effectiveness in cross-functional autonomous squads

Organisations tend to tailor agile methods to scale employed practices to have cross-functional autonomous teams while promoting sustainable creative and productive development at a constant pace. Thus, it is important to investigate how organisations tailor agile practices to get the balance right between teams' autonomy and alignment. Spotify model is originally introduced to facilitate the development of music streaming services in a very large-scale project with a Business-to-Consumer (B2C) model. However, developing a large-scale mission-critical project with a Business-to-Business (B2B) model is not essentially supported by the Spotify model. Thus, embracing Spotify model for such projects should be concerned about the question of how Spotify practices are adjusted to promote the effectiveness of cross-functional autonomous squads in a mission-critical project with B2B model? In this paper, we conduct a longitudinal embedded case study, which lasted 21 months during which 14 semi-structured interviews were conducted. The Grounded Theory (GT) is adopted to analyse the collected data. As a result, we identify practices and processes that promote effectiveness in cross-functional autonomous squads, which have never been discussed in terms of Spotify model before. We also present Spotify Tailoring by highlighting modified and newly introduced practices by the organisation in which the case study was conducted

Proximity morality in medical school – medical students forming physician morality "on the job": Grounded theory analysis of a student survey

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The value of ethics education have been questioned. Therefore we did a student survey on attitudes about the teaching of ethics in Swedish medical schools.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Questionnaire survey on attitudes to ethics education with 409 Swedish medical students participating. We analyzed > 8000 words of open-ended responses and multiple-choice questions using classic grounded theory procedures.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In this paper we suggest that medical students take a proximity morality stance towards their ethics education meaning that they want to form physician morality "on the job". This involves comprehensive ethics courses in which quality lectures provide "ethics grammar" and together with attitude exercises and vignette reflections nurture tutored group discussions. Goals of forming physician morality are to develop a professional identity, handling diversity of religious and existential worldviews, training students described as ethically naive, processing difficult clinical experiences, and desisting negative role modeling from physicians in clinical or teaching situations, some engaging in "ethics suppression" by controlling sensitive topic discussions and serving students politically correct attitudes.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We found that medical students have a proximity morality attitude towards ethics education. Rather than being taught ethics they want to form their own physician morality through tutored group discussions in comprehensive ethics courses.</p

Systematic review of grounded theory studies in physiotherapy

Aim: This systematic review aimed at appraising the methodological rigor of grounded theory research published in the field of physiotherapy to assess how the methodology is understood and applied. A secondary aim was to provide research implications drawn from the findings to guide future grounded theory methodology research. Methods: A systematic search was conducted in MEDLINE, CINHAL, SPORT Discus, Science Direct, PubMed, Scopus and Web of Science to identify studies in the field of physiotherapy that reported using grounded theory methodology and/or methods in the study title and/or abstract. The descriptive characteristics and methodological quality of eligible studies were examined using the assessment guidelines developed by Hutchison, Johnston and Breckon (2011). Findings: The review included sixty-eight studies conducted between 1998 and 2017. The findings showed that grounded theory methodology is becoming increasingly used by physiotherapy researchers. Thirty-six studies (53%) demonstrated a good understanding and appropriate application of grounded theory methodology. Thirty-two studies (47%) presented descriptive findings and were considered to be of poor methodological quality. Conclusions: There are several key tenets of grounded theory methodology that are integral to the iterative process of qualitative theorizing and need to be applied throughout all research practices including sampling, data collection and analysis

Concealment, communication and stigma: The perspectives of HIV-positive immigrant Black African men and their partners living in the United Kingdom

This study explored the perspectives of Black men, originally from East Africa, living in the United Kingdom and their families on what it means to live with diagnosed HIV. This article reports on concealment of HIV-positive status as a strategy adopted by the affected participants to manage the flow of information about their HIV-positive status. Analysis of the data, collected using in-depth interviews involving 23 participants, found widespread selective concealment of HIV-positive status. However, a few respondents had ‘come out’ publicly about their condition. HIV prevention initiatives should recognise concealment as a vital strategy in managing communication about one’s HIV-positive status

Reincentivizing – a new theory of work and work absence

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Work capacity correlates weakly to disease concepts, which in turn are insufficient to explain sick leave behavior. With data mainly from Sweden, a welfare state with high sickness absence rates, our aim was to develop an explanatory theory of how to understand and deal with work absence and sick leave.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We used classic grounded theory for analyzing data from >130 interviews with people working or on sick leave, physicians, social security officers, and literature. Several hundreds of typed and handwritten memos were the basis for writing up the theory.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In this paper we present a theory of work incentives and how to deal with work absence. We suggest that work disability can be seen as hurt work drivers or people caught in mode traps. Work drivers are specified as work capacities + work incentives, monetary and non-monetary. Also, people can get trapped in certain modes of behavior through changed capacities or incentives, or by inertia. Different modes have different drivers and these can trap the individual from reincentivizing, ie from going back to work or go on working. Hurt drivers and mode traps are recognized by driver assessments done on several different levels. Mode driver calculations are done by the worker. Then follows employer, physician, and social insurance officer assessments. Also, driver assessments are done on the macro level by legislators and other stakeholders. Reincentivizing is done by different repair strategies for hurt work drivers such as body repair, self repair, work-place repair, rehumanizing, controlling sick leave insurance, and strengthening monetary work incentives. Combinations of these driver repair strategies also do release people from mode traps.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Reincentivizing is about recognizing hurt work drivers and mode traps followed by repairing and releasing the same drivers and traps. Reincentivizing aims at explaining what is going on when work absence is dealt with and the theory may add to social psychological research on work and work absence, and possibly inform sick leave policies.</p

Agile at scale : a summary of the 8th International Workshop on Large-Scale Agile Development

The Large-Scale Agile Development workshop explored the main research challenges in large-scale software development. We considered multi-site organisations with large-scale projects that include a large number of teams adopting agile methods. Such topics include inter-team coordination, knowledge sharing, large project organisation, agile transformation, agile teamwork quality, project models that facilitate several self-organising teams, and practices for scaling agile methods. We accepted five full research papers, which are included in this volume. The accepted papers report empirical research studies using surveys, observations and case studies. Also, an interactive online discussion session was conducted to compare the two approaches, SAFe and Spotify. The workshop participants, which were around a hundred people, joined this discussion to compare the two approaches and suggest some future research questions about the hybridisation of SAFe and Spotify. This workshop summary contributes as a current snapshot of research along with some results from an interactive discussion about SAFe and Spotify

Discourse revisited : dimensions and employment of first-order strategy discourse during institutional adoption

Despite decades of research on strategy, we still know little about what the concept of strategy means to actual strategists and how they use it in practice. Working at the intersections of institutional and practice theories, we use exploratory interviews with strategy directors and a longitudinal case study to uncover four dimensions of first-order strategy discourse: functional, contextual, identity, and metaphorical. We also reveal three phases in the interrelation between first-order strategy discourse and institutional work: shaping, settling, and selling and a differential emphasis (selective focusing) on dimensions of the first-order strategy discourse during the institutional adoption process. We contribute to a deeper understanding of the concept of strategy in practice, the process of institutional adoption, and of the role of discourse in this process

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

Amplified ambivalence: having a sibling with juvenile idiopathic arthritis

Despite increased awareness of family responses to chronic illness and disability, there is still a need to understand experiences of well siblings. We begin to address this by asking “What is it like to have a sibling with juvenile idiopathic arthritis?” (JIA).Eight families with an adolescent diagnosed with JIA participated. Four members of each family, including one healthy sibling, were interviewed and transcripts analyzed using grounded theory. Analysis suggests healthy siblings see their family as different to ‘normal’ families, forfeit time with peers, share vicariously adverse experiences of their ill sibling, and feel inadequately informed. Such experiences amplify the ambivalent nature of sibling relationships and are possibly felt most strongly during late childhood and early adolescence. Support from extended family can reduce these negative experiences and facilitate social and emotional adjustment which also occurs over time as the children mature. These findings have implications for healthcare professionals and voluntary organizations