Challenges and Success Factors for Large-scale Agile Transformations

Abstract

a b s t r a c tAgile methods have become an appealing alternative for companies striving to improve their performance, but the methods were originally designed for small and individual teams. This creates unique challenges when introducing agile at scale, when development teams must synchronize their activities, and there might be a need to interface with other organizational units. In this paper we present a systematic literature review on how agile methods and lean software development has been adopted at scale, focusing on reported challenges and success factors in the transformation. We conducted a systematic literature review of industrial large-scale agile transformations. Our keyword search found 1875 papers. We included 52 publications describing 42 industrial cases presenting the process of taking large-scale agile development into use. Almost 90% of the included papers were experience reports, indicating a lack of sound academic research on the topic. We identified 35 reported challenges grouped into nine categories, and 29 success factors, grouped into eleven categories. The most salient success factor categories were management support, choosing and customizing the agile model, training and coaching, and mindset and alignment.

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

“…Recent research reports that most of the goals and practices for scaling agile are domain independent, listing as key factors challenges in coordinating multiple teams , difficulties with managing requirements , problems in adaptation with the organizational structure , and issues in understanding agile concepts along the value chain . Additionally, customer involvement , software architectural concerns , and interteam coordination were also reported, together with challenges in coordinating the work of several teams …”

Challenges and Solutions of Applying Large-Scale Agile at Organization-al Level

“…[4], [6], [10], [11] Different interpretations of agile principles and practices among agile teams. [14] Managing and sharing knowledge with stakeholders.…”

“…The team is just one step in an organization's value creation process, and each team has to coordinate their work with other teams. It is quite difficult to bring agility beyond the team as the introduction of agile might create flexibility at the team level, but the surrounding organization could not be responsive enough [6]. Another challenge in multi-team environments is related to the problems that arise with the self-organizing team principle [4], [6], [10], [13], one of the fundamental assumptions in agile approach.…”

“…The majority of literature treats the subject of large-scale agile implementation at the individual level or not very specific. Only a few papers have explicitly assumed an organization perspective when analyzing agile adoption at large [5], [6], [7]. Also, through our literature review, we have found that some papers mention that they deal with agile issues in large organization, but their approach and results are focused on agile for large software project or large-scale agile development [8] or a mixed of those with large organization perspective [6].…”

“…Only a few papers have explicitly assumed an organization perspective when analyzing agile adoption at large [5], [6], [7]. Also, through our literature review, we have found that some papers mention that they deal with agile issues in large organization, but their approach and results are focused on agile for large software project or large-scale agile development [8] or a mixed of those with large organization perspective [6]. In our paper we are adopting an organizational level perspective with the aim to analyze how 1 DOI: 10.12948/issn14531305/23.3.2019.06 agile development methodologies can be applied in large companies to best fit to an organizational context.…”