Abstract
Many large organizations are adopting agile software development as part of their continuous push towards higher flexibility and shorter lead times, yet few reports on large-scale agile transformations are available in the literature. In this paper we report how Ericsson introduced agile in a new R&D product development program developing a XaaS platform and a related set of services, while simultaneously scaling it up aggressively. The overarching goal for the R&D organization, distributed to five sites at two continents, was to achieve continuous feature delivery. This single case study is based on 45 semi-structured interviews during visits at four sites, and five observation sessions at three sites. We describe how the organization experimented with different set-ups for their tens of agile teams aiming for rapid end-to-end development: from component-based virtual teams to totally cross-functional, cross-component, cross-site teams. Moreover, we discuss the challenges the organization faced and how they mitigated them on their journey towards continuous and rapid software engineering. We present four lessons learned for large-scale agile transformations: 1) consider using an experimental approach to transformation, 2) consider implementing the transformation step-wise in complex large-scale settings, 3) team inter-changeability can be limited in a complex large-scale product — specialization might be needed, and 4) not using a common agile framework for the whole organization, in combination with insufficient common trainings and coaching may lead to a lack of common direction in the agile implementation. Further in-depth case studies on large-scale agile transformations, on customizing agile to large-scale settings, as well as on the use of scaling frameworks are needed.
Highlights
Increasing pressure to reduce cycle time, improve quality, and swiftly react to changes in customer needs are driving companies, large and small, to adopt agile software development (VersionOne 2016)
The review identified only six scientific studies on large scale agile transformations, as almost 90% of the included papers were experience reports written by practitioners
According to the State of Agile Survey (VersionOne 2016), 43% of the self-selected respondents worked in development organizations having more than 50% of teams using agile, while only 4% of respondents stated that none of their teams were agile, and 62% of almost 4000 respondents came from an organization with over a hundred people in software development
Summary
Increasing pressure to reduce cycle time, improve quality, and swiftly react to changes in customer needs are driving companies, large and small, to adopt agile software development (VersionOne 2016). Agile development can improve efficiency and quality (Livermore 2008a), and enable shorter lead times and a stronger focus on customer needs (Petersen and Wohlin 2010). Even though agile software development methods were originally designed for single, small teams, during recent years, large organizations have increasingly adopted them (Hossain et al 2009; Larman and Vodde 2010; Leffingwell 2007). A recent systematic literature review (Dikert et al 2016) revealed the lack of systematically conducted studies on large software development organizations adopting agile methods. In recent workshops on large-scale agile development, the introduction of agile methods was one of the highlighted themes needing more research (Dingsøyr and Moe 2013; 2014)
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