DYNAMICS OF INTER-TEAM COORDINATION ROUTINES IN LARGE-SCALE AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

Software development organizations are adopting values, principles, and frameworks to implement agile ways of working today. But the agile methods were initially designed for use in small, single-team projects and routines for coordination between several teams have not been adopted in the same way as routines for coordination within the team. The Scaled Agile Framework has become the most common way to implement organizational routines for inter-team coordination, but critiques claim it to be too strict and formal, without leeway for adaption. This study investigates the dynamics of inter-team coordination routines at three organizations and provides thick descriptions of tailoring. Data collection was performed by 379 hours of observations and 28 interviews. The main findings highlight the variety in ostensive and performative aspects of coordination routines and how they change over time. Contrary to earlier findings, the ostensive and performative aspects in this study do not have opposing varieties. This indicates that the empirical relationship between ostensive and performative aspects might not be as atypical as previous results suggest. An important practical contribution is the described possible tailoring options when scaling up agile ways of working which contradict the view of the framework being too rigid

Team Performance in Large-Scale Agile Software Development

Agile ways of working are nowadays used in many software development departments in larger organizations. When scaling up agile ways of working, new practices for coordinating teams become necessary, and many organizations are implementing the Scaled Agile Framework. The added practices for coordinating teams could have an impact on team performance, but they have not been much studied. In this study, data were obtained by means of a survey questionnaire that was answered by 201 employees from three organizations: one from the automotive industry, one government agency, and a business bank. The study suggests that efficient inter-team coordination does not have a positive relationship to team performance, which is contrary to previous studies. However, results suggests that a high level of psychological safety has a significant positive correlation to team performance

Practices for Vertical and Horizontal Coordination in the Scaled Agile Framework

Scrum and eXtreme programming, the first agile development frameworks, were designed with very few advice on coordination for work in larger scale were several teams cooperate toward a common goal. This lead to both wrong assumptions regarding the usefulness of agile ways of working in larger organizations as well as much individual tailoring with coordination practices in organizations. Now, the Scaled Agile Framework is gaining much attention in software development. This study contains an analysis of inter-team coordination practices prescribed in the framework and how they have been implemented in three organizations. Previous research on coordination has been criticized for having a static view on coordination with not enough focus on how to manage emerging dependency issues. The result of this study shows that the Scaled Agile Framework have four practices that cover both planning and emerging issues and three practices solely aimed at managing these emerging dependency issues

Perceived Impacts of Using the Scaled Agile Framework for Large-Scale Agile Software Development

Software development organizations are adopting values, principles, and frameworks to implement agile ways of working today, even in larger organizations. When several teams need to cooperate, and development needs to scale, many organizations are implementing the Scaled Agile Framework. At the same time, both researchers and practitioners have raised critical voices towards this framework, and the impacts are not much studied. This study aims to fill that gap by providing perceptions of benefits and drawbacks experienced in three different organizations: one in the automotive industry, one government agency, and one bank in Sweden. The analysis of survey answers from 154 respondents showed that the most commonly perceived benefits from implementing the Scaled Agile Framework were increased visibility, overview, and transparency. Authors of the framework claim massive productivity gains in every single team but, regarding perceived drawbacks, a lack of productivity, focus, and efficiency were most commonly reported

Enhancing Web-Based Configuration with Recommendations and Cluster-Based Help

In a collaborative project with Tacton AB, we have investigated new ways of assisting the user in the process of on-line product configuration. A web-based prototype, RIND, was built for ephemeral users in the domain of PC configuration

Changes to team autonomy in large-scale software development: a multiple case study of Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) implementations

Large-scale transformations of agile ways of working have received more attention in the industry in recent years. Some organizations have developed their own solutions for scaling, whereas many have chosen trademarked frameworks. In large-scale agile software development, many developers and development teams carry out work simultaneously. When autonomous teams need to coordinate toward a common goal, they must sacrifice some level of autonomy. Development, testing, and integrations need to be coordinated with other teams and aligned with an organization´s programs or portfolio. Through the conducting of 28 interviews and 17 on-site visits, this multiple case study explored how team autonomy changed in three agile software development organizations that implemented the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). The positive changes to team autonomy that they experienced as a result included getting a better overview, making better long-term decisions, giving and receiving help, and signaling limitations. We found two negative impacts on team autonomy: limited feature choice and enforced refinement. The study extends previous research on large-scale agile software development and improves our understanding of impacts on team autonomy

Changes to team autonomy in large-scale software development: a multiple case study of Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) implementations

Large-scale transformations of agile ways of working have received more attention in the industry in recent years. Some organizations have developed their own solutions for scaling, whereas many have chosen trademarked frameworks. In large-scale agile software development, many developers and development teams carry out work simultaneously. When autonomous teams need to coordinate toward a common goal, they must sacrifice some level of autonomy. Development, testing, and integrations need to be coordinated with other teams and aligned with an organization´s programs or portfolio. Through the conducting of 28 interviews and 17 on-site visits, this multiple case study explored how team autonomy changed in three agile software development organizations that implemented the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). The positive changes to team autonomy that they experienced as a result included getting a better overview, making better long-term decisions, giving and receiving help, and signaling limitations. We found two negative impacts on team autonomy: limited feature choice and enforced refinement. The study extends previous research on large-scale agile software development and improves our understanding of impacts on team autonomy

Changes to team autonomy in large-scale software development: a multiple case study of Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) implementations

Large-scale transformations of agile ways of working have received more attention in the industry in recent years. Some organizations have developed their own solutions for scaling, whereas many have chosen trademarked frameworks. In large-scale agile software development, many developers and development teams carry out work simultaneously. When autonomous teams need to coordinate toward a common goal, they must sacrifice some level of autonomy. Development, testing, and integrations need to be coordinated with other teams and aligned with an organization´s programs or portfolio. Through the conducting of 28 interviews and 17 on-site visits, this multiple case study explored how team autonomy changed in three agile software development organizations that implemented the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). The positive changes to team autonomy that they experienced as a result included getting a better overview, making better long-term decisions, giving and receiving help, and signaling limitations. We found two negative impacts on team autonomy: limited feature choice and enforced refinement. The study extends previous research on large-scale agile software development and improves our understanding of impacts on team autonomy.publishedVersio

Abundance and diversity of birds in foests with different management goals

Research shows a negative relationship between biodiversity and intensity of forest management in boreal environments among others. In Swedish forest management the stands are divided into different management types. Two of them focus on wood production while the other two have a greater focus on nature conservation. This study compares the differences between the management types in terms of the diversity and abundance of forest birds. The data was collected through bird surveys, during three separate spring weeks in 2012, during the months March, April and May in Färna Ekopark, located close to Skinnskatteberg in Västmanland, south-central Sweden. In addition to looking at a general pattern concerning the above relationship, the data was also analyzed separately for four different categories of birds: indicator species, cavity-nesters, resident birds and migratory birds. In the case of overall forest bird community, an ANOVA test was performed to see if the results were statistically significant. The results from all analyses showed that management type NS (active management to enhance biodiversity values) had the highest diversity (expressed by species richness) and abundance of forest birds. Hence, to obtain a more diverse and abundant level of forest birds, more stands should be managed as NS stands

Team performance and large scale agile software development

Software development is a team work and largely dependent on open social interaction and continuous learning of individuals. Drawing on well established theoretical concepts proposed by social psychology and organizational science disciplines, we develop a theoretical framework proposing that team climate has a significant influence on team learning and ultimately affects team performance. Our study consists of two goals. First to understand the preconditions of team learning and second to investigate the relationship between team learning, psychological safety, and team performance in large scale agile software development projects. We plan to conduct a survey with software professionals in Sweden from three companies partners in pur large-scale agile research project.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure, conference, ESEM, Register Repor