Abstract
Today, product development organizations are adopting agile methods in units outside the software development unit, such as in sales, market, legal, operations working with the customer. This broader adoption of agile methods has been labeled large-scale agile transformation and is considered a particular type of organizational change, originating in the software development units. So far, there is little research-based advice on conducting such transformations. Aiming to contribute towards providing relevant research advice on large-scale agile transformation, we apply a research-based framework for evaluating organizational agility on a product development program in a maritime service provider organization. We found that doing a large-scale agile transformation involves many significant challenges, such as having a shared understanding of the problem, getting access to users, and getting commitment to change that needs to be done. In order to overcome such challenges, we discuss the need for a holistic and integrated approach to agile transformation involving all the units linked to software development.
Highlights
Product development organizations are adopting agile methods in units outside the software development unit, such as in sales, market, legal, operations working with the customer
We found that doing a large-scale agile transformation involves many significant challenges, such as having a shared understanding of the problem, getting access to users, and getting commitment to change that needs to be done
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows: In Sect. 2, we present relevant literature on large-scale agile transformation and the agile organization framework we use for understanding such transformation
Summary
Software development teams are currently working on developing products providing new digitally enabled customer experiences - while simultaneously incubating and accelerating digital innovations - are facing increasingly complex problems to be solved. One example is close cooperation with the business development unit needed in order to achieve the potential advantages of a continuous business and development process [3]. Another example is the need for fast feedback from the customer, which in agile software development is realized by the introduction of frequent software releases to the customer or market. While agile methods have traditionally been practiced within software development teams, there is a need for using agile methods for interaction between software teams and other non-development organizational units, such as markets, sales, and operations. The process of continuously assessing and improving this link is described as BizDev [3]
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