Coordinating Knowledge Work in Multi-Team Programs: Findings from a Large-Scale Agile Development Program

Software development projects have undergone remarkable changes with the arrival of agile development methods. While intended for small, self-managing teams, these methods are increasingly used also for large development programs. A major challenge in programs is to coordinate the work of many teams, due to high uncertainty in tasks, a high degree of interdependence between tasks and because of the large number of people involved. This revelatory case study focuses on how knowledge work is coordinated in large-scale agile development programs by providing a rich description of the coordination practices used and how these practices change over time in a four year development program with 12 development teams. The main findings highlight the role of coordination modes based on feedback, the use of a number of mechanisms far beyond what is described in practitioner advice, and finally how coordination practices change over time. The findings are important to improve the outcome of large knowledge-based development programs by tailoring coordination practices to needs and ensuring adjustment over time.Comment: To appear in Project Management Journa

Characterization of an Agile Coordination Office for IST companies

Typically the Project Management Office activity is linked to the management and coordination of plan-driven projects, also known as waterfall or traditional projects. However, with the advent of agile methodologies in organizations of software development (the case of many information systems and technologies (IST)) no longer value the traditional PMO. It needs to be changed according to the agile values, so the organizations can extract benefits from such structure. These need to be fundamental changes in the responsibilities, practices and roles that a PMO should have. Also, it seems appropriate to rename it to something more descriptive and we chose to name it Agile Coordination Office (ACO). This paper presents the initial proposal of the ACO based on the existing literature. We propose the ACO to assume a behavior mainly supportive, due to the empowerment that every agile development team must have by definition. In addition, the architecture of this ACO aims to cover the various levels of management, from project and program up to the portfolio management. This division also reduces the complexity of ACO's implementation process and gives flexibility to rearrange the ACO over time.This work has been supported by COMPETE: POCI-01- 0145- FEDER007043 and FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/201

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

The issue of competence in transforming the Norwegian welfare sector: some implications for future e-government initiatives

In this paper we argue that e-government initiatives need to take the competence involved in producing high-quality services for citizens into account. We draw on insights from a Pilot project in a Norwegian municipal aiming at radically re-structuring the Norwegian welfare sector and show how the competence to provide high-quality services rely on the collective achievement of individuals’ knowing-in-practice when dealing with particular cases and situations. Furthermore, we show how competence in terms of ‘processes of knowing’ is intrinsically related to organization structure and existing information systems (IS). Transforming the Norwegian Welfare Sector then, involves transforming a socio-technical network of heterogeneous elements, where existing processes of knowing plays an important role. Based on this, we then discuss some implications for implementing e-government in local municipals, and in particular e-government initiatives that aim at introducing all-embracing integrated IT-solutions across organizational and geographical borders. The paper concludes by sketching some implications for future research on e-government

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

The impact of employee participation on the use of an electronic process guide: A longitudinal case study

-Many software companies disseminate process knowledge through electronic process guides. A common problem with such guides is that they are not used. Through a case study, we investigated how participation in creating an electronic process guide, through process workshops, influenced the use of the guide. We studied developer and project manager usage with respect to three factors: frequency of use, used functionality, and reported advantages and disadvantages. We collected data from three rounds of interviews and 19 months of usage logs in a longitudinal study in a medium-size software company. Employees who participated in process workshops showed a higher degree of usage, used a larger number of functions, and expressed more advantages and disadvantages than those not involved. Our study suggests that employee participation has a long-term positive effect on electronic process guide usage

Minimum Viable Common Ground: A Case Study of Collaboration Rooms as an Agile Approach to Interdepency Management

Large-scale agile transformation implies that agile approaches are moving from standalone in-formation system development units such as teams towards being applied in more complex organi-sational settings with multiple and diverse units. Research on large-scale agile transformation suggests that agile methods with its focus on mutual adjustment increases interdependencies be-tween diverse units. However, extant empirical research on how interdependencies can be man-aged in large-scale agile transformations is scarce. We report from an interpretative case study of an agile transformation initiative in a company with 20.000 employees. Based on data from 32 interviews combined with participatory observation in retrospectives we analyse how “collabora-tion rooms” are used to manage the interdependence between heterogeneous units, and how the collaboration rooms are conceived by information systems development practitioners as an agile transformation initiative. Using the concept of trading zones we contribute by discussing how het-erogeneous units can manage interdependencies by using collaboration rooms as a minimum via-ble common ground. We discuss how the minimum viable ground i) fit new practices with existing practices, ii) allows flatter decision structures, and iii) is a subtle and iterative approach to organ-izational transformation.acceptedVersio