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Abstract
While there is a plethora of literature on IT Sourcing (ITS) strategy, little is known about the impact of large-scale agile frameworks on these strategies. Empirical evidence suggests that application of agile frameworks has an impact on governance and processes in large organisations including ITS strategies. Yet, the effects of such frameworks remain unrevealed. This research investigates the impact of agile frameworks on ITS decisions and the way organisations configure their ITS strategies. The research first studies literature to realise that there is a lack of empirical research on ITS strategies in organisations that use agile frameworks. Then, through a systematic literature review, ten different dimensions of ITS are identified and used as the required construct for a multiple-case study at six Netherlands-based organisations. The results reveal that four dimensions, namely sourcing model, location, pricing model, and relational governance are mostly affected by agile frameworks. Furthermore, after more than three years of utilising agile frameworks, case organisations still have not discovered a proper optimum point for these dimensions. The results also uncover that organisations are not fully aware of the impact of agile transformation on the process of ITS decision-making. This process may remain intact for years, resulting in continuous experimentation and trial and error of ITS strategies. We conclude that organisations should recognise the effects of agile frameworks to make ITS decisions accordingly. Additionally, adhering to a more rational and structured decision-making process helps organisations to more efficiently find proper optimum points for the dimensions of ITS strategy.
Highlights
IT Outsourcing (ITO) emerged in the mid-60s when hardware and IT services were not affordable to all companies (Lee et al 2003)
In order to fill the empirical gap in the literature, our study aims to answer the following questions: RQ1: What is the state-of-the-practice of configuring IT Sourcing (ITS) strategies in large-scale organisations that use agile frameworks? RQ2: What is the impact of agile frameworks on the configuration of ITS strategies? RQ3: How can large-scale organisations align their ITS strategies with their agile frameworks?
During the preliminary literature review, it was realised that information about two major key elements of ITS decision-making which are at the centre of attention when following the configuration-based approach is disperse in literature
Summary
IT Outsourcing (ITO) emerged in the mid-60s when hardware and IT services were not affordable to all companies (Lee et al 2003). Utilising agile software development methods in large organisations is complex and challenging and requires a special form of coordination (Dyba and Dingsoyr 2009). These challenges have led to the emergence of multiple extended derivations of traditional agile methods such as Scrum of Scrums (SoS), scaled agile framework (SAFe), Large Scale Scrum (LeSS), Spotify, etc. Under the term of large-scale agile frameworks (Kalenda et al 2018) These frameworks are more complicated than simple agile practices and target larger organisations. They differ in the level of complexity, the agile methods that they use and the type of organisations they support
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