Issues in the Adoption of the Scaled Agile Framework

Ciancarini, Paolo; Kruglov, Artem; Pedrycz, W.; Salikhov, Dilshat; Succi, Giancarlo

doi:10.1109/icse-seip55303.2022.9794087

Cited by 1 publication

(10 citation statements)

References 31 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…On the one hand, it confirms existing findings that corporate bodies tend to be rigid in nature and oppose relinquishing their authority and shifting from command-and-control management to leadership-and-collaboration. 20,62,63,66 On the other hand, contrary to what is oftentimes claimed in the literature, 4,7,20,60,62 our study suggests that a successful large-scale agile transformation is possible without the adoption of an agile mindset at the organizational level and with the old bureaucracy as well as the Taylor-devised management system in place. Nonetheless, the project teams must have autonomy regarding their work practices to resolve issues associated with inter-team coordination.…”

Section: Implications Of the Studycontrasting

confidence: 92%

“…15,19,60 Moreover, SAFe affects overall decision-making and focuses more on following predefined processes than on adapting processes to the need of the organization. 20 Furthermore, both SAFe and LeSS advocate that teams should work closely with customers, 60 whereas Trusted Analytics Platform was off-the-shelf software and hence there was no customer to work against. Finally, Spotify and Scrum at Scale are not as handy and flexible as Nexus.…”

Section: Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…[4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13] Besides, not all organizations are ready to fully implement any framework in a one-time shift regarding organizational, cultural, and technical aspects, 13,14 whereas there are no gradual approaches or guidelines for large-scale agile transformation. 15,16 Indeed, previous studies have reported numerous challenges while adopting such frameworks, 4,6,17 including a mismatch between framework and organization, 6,7,13 controversies within the framework, [18][19][20] complex organization setup, 15,20 changes in management structure, 6,15,19,21,22 fluctuating company's policies, 15,19,21 and change resistance. 15,19,20 Not surprisingly, it has been acknowledged that agile methods often need to be tailored to accommodate specific situations [6][7][8]12,14,[23][24][25] or issues (e.g., risk management).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…15,16 Indeed, previous studies have reported numerous challenges while adopting such frameworks, 4,6,17 including a mismatch between framework and organization, 6,7,13 controversies within the framework, [18][19][20] complex organization setup, 15,20 changes in management structure, 6,15,19,21,22 fluctuating company's policies, 15,19,21 and change resistance. 15,19,20 Not surprisingly, it has been acknowledged that agile methods often need to be tailored to accommodate specific situations [6][7][8]12,14,[23][24][25] or issues (e.g., risk management). 26 Tailoring software engineering methods can be classified into one of two approaches -namely, situational method engineering and method configuration 5,27 (some researchers consider method configuration as a particular form of situational method engineering).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…28 As far as agile software development is concerned, method fragments are known as agile practices. 30,31 Regardless of which specific approach is adopted, tailoring is not trivial and poses serious challenges for practitioners 14 even in the context of agile methods 10,20,24,32 despite the fact that "anything labeled as agile should itself be flexible and amenable to tailoring". 8 Firstly, practitioners usually do not know how to carry out method tailoring in a disciplined manner, and how to evaluate each method fragment before deciding whether to adopt it or remove it, 5,8,14 whereas unstructured, ad hoc tailoring results in projects being subjected to what the practitioners called the "haphazard" or "patchy" use of a method.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

Scaling scrum with a customized nexus framework: A report from a joint industry‐academia research project

2023

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Despite a wide range of scaling frameworks available, large‐scale agile transformations are not straightforward undertakings. Few organizations have structures in place that fit the predefined workflows – while once one applies an off‐the‐shelf framework outside of its prescribed process, guidance quickly runs out. In this paper, we demonstrate how to instantiate a method configuration process using a lightweight experimental approach embedded in Action Research cycles. The proposed approach was developed to assist practitioners working on a multiple‐team project at Intel Technology Poland to find the right practices to continue their Nexus‐based transformation and integrate their in‐house method into the already established company structures, processes, and routines. In particular, it enabled identifying a series of challenges with scaled practices and coping with those. The challenges ranged from logistical problems, through poor availability of the Product Owner, to lackluster knowledge transfer and a wide array of communication/coordination issues at meetings. The study broadens the current body of knowledge within technology management and the scaled agile method‐tailoring domain. It indicates potential corrective actions that may be taken advantage of by entities that are not inclined, due to organizational constraints, to directly implement an off‐the‐shelf framework. Furthermore, our study demonstrates that a gradual transition to large‐scale agile at the project level (1) is possible with the preservation of traditional command‐and‐control management practices; (2) requires neither middle management involvement nor upfront investment; and (3) does not need to disrupt the continuous delivery of the product.

show abstract