Agile Methods on Large Projects in Large Organizations

Abstract

Agile methods have taken software development by storm but have been primarily applied to projects in what is referred to as the “agile sweet spot,” which consists of small collocated teams working on small, non-critical, green field, in-house software projects with stable architectures and simple governance rules. These methods are being used more and more on large projects, but little documentation is available in the academic literature. This article investigates the adoption and adaptation of agile methods for use on large projects in large organizations. The empirical study is based first on case studies, followed by a survey to validate and enrich the case study results. The results are somewhat paradoxical in that some features are common to almost all observations, whereas others show extreme variability. The common features include use of Scrum methodology and agile coaches, as well as the non-respect of the agile principle of emergent architecture.

“We Use Scrum, but …”: Agile Modifications and Project Success

“…Agile approaches were purported to make better, faster and cheaper software [18] that responded to the dynamic environments in which IT projects were being developed. They addressed the emerging challenges of the software development industry, characterized by high uncertainty, short development cycles, and the absence of a physical deliverable [23]. Agile approaches have delivered on this promise: Standish group results on project success indicate that across all project sizes, those that use an agile approach are more likely to succeed [24].…”

“…Stettina and Heijstek [31] studied five dimensions of team dynamics within agile scrum and found that team autonomy was consistently the least respected dimension. Literature has also begun to address adaptations to scrum for large [23] and very large [32] projects. Hobbs & Petit [23] found that the need for the product owner to balance availability, knowledge of business needs and decisionmaking authority was particularly challenging, because on large projects these three aspects were often contradictory.…”

“…UX, Back-end), and each functional team conducting its own, independent sprints. Appropriately scaling scrum is a challenge evoked by Hobbs & Petit [23] who indicate that research on this issue is "ongoing but is still incomplete" (p. 16).…”

Scaling agile in large organizations: Practices, challenges, and success factors

“…We are, however, far away from reaching consensus on the best set of practices given a context . We know that scaling agile is particularly challenging in the distributed development context, for the development of safety critical systems in regulated environments, for continuous value delivery, and due to contradictions that might emerge in large bureaucratic organizations …”

“…4,9 We know that scaling agile is particularly challenging in the distributed development context, 10,31 for the development of safety critical systems in regulated environments, 2 for continuous value delivery, 32 and due to contradictions that might emerge in large bureaucratic organizations. 33 The goal of this paper is to collect more evidence about impact factors during an agile scaling process, as we need more evidence about practices that work best in a given context, 1,34 collected as the process happens and not ex-post, 4 possibly to research variations over time. 18 We approach the goals by firstly evaluating existing methods and frameworks for scaling agile development.…”