Large-scale Agile Research Articles

Large-scale agile security practices in software engineering

Purpose Security in large-scale agile is a crucial aspect that should be carefully addressed to ensure the protection of sensitive data, systems and user privacy. This study aims to identify and characterize the security practices that can be applied in managing large-scale agile projects. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative study is carried out through 18 interviews with 6 software development companies based in Portugal. Professionals who play the roles of Product Owner, Scrum Master and Scrum Member were interviewed. A thematic analysis was applied to identify deductive and inductive security practices. Findings The findings identified a total of 15 security practices, of which 8 are deductive themes and 7 are inductive. Most common security practices in large-scale agile include penetration testing, sensitive data management, automated testing, threat modeling and the implementation of a DevSecOps approach. Originality/value The results of this study extend the knowledge about large-scale security practices and offer relevant practical contributions for organizations that are migrating to large-scale agile environments. By incorporating security practices at every stage of the agile development lifecycle and fostering a security-conscious culture, organizations can effectively address security challenges in large-scale agile environments.

Navigating social debt and its link with technical debt in large-scale agile software development projects

Agile methodologies have emerged as transformative paradigms in the ever-evolving software development landscape, emphasizing iterative development, customer collaboration, and adaptability. As the scope and complexity of projects and organizations expand, applying agile principles within the context of Large-Scale Agile Development (LSAD) encounters distinctive challenges. The majority of challenges encountered in LSAD, technical and non-technical, are attributed to the accrual of social debt. However, a conspicuous gap remains in understanding and addressing social debt in LSAD. This study aims to fill this void by investigating social debt in LSAD through an in-depth industrial case study with a leading Nordic company specializing in telecommunications software and services and focusing on producing secure 5G network solutions. The study investigates the causes of LSAD’s social debt and examines its impacts on secure 5G telecom software development. By addressing these objectives, this research sheds light on a critical aspect of LSAD’s social debt, caused by 3C challenges(communication, coordination and collaboration), social confines challenges, community smells challenges, and organisational social challenges in the telecom sector that have been underrepresented in the existing literature.

Large-Scale Agile Project Management in Safety-Critical Industries: A Case Study on Challenges and Solutions

ABSTRACT While agile project management offers benefits such as faster time to market and improved collaboration, scaling it to larger projects presents challenges, particularly in safety-critical industries. This research provides insights into the resistance to agile adoption due to regulatory constraints and other barriers. The findings contribute to information systems literature by identifying four challenges (organizational, technological, behavioral, regulatory) and complementing solutions to show how large-scale agile can work in safety-critical industries.

Responding to change over time: A longitudinal case study on changes in coordination mechanisms in large-scale agile

ContextResponding to change and continuously improving processes, practices, and products are core to agile software development. It is no different in large-scale agile, where multiple software development teams need to respond both to changes in their external environments and to changes within the organization.ObjectiveWith this study, we aim to advance knowledge on coordination in large-scale agile by developing a model of the types of organizational changes that influence coordination mechanisms.MethodWe conducted a longitudinal case study in a growing large-scale agile organization, focusing on how external and internal changes impact coordination over time. We collected our data through 62 days of fieldwork across one and a half years. We conducted 37 interviews, observed 118 meetings at all organizational levels, collected supplementary material such as chat logs and presentations, and analyzed the data using thematic analysis.ResultsOur findings demonstrate how external events, such as onboarding new clients, and internal events, such as changes in the team organization, influence coordination mechanisms in the large-scale software development program. We find that external and internal change events lead to the introduction of new coordination mechanisms, or the adjustment of existing ones. Further, we find that continuous scaling requires continuous change and adjustment. Finally, we find that having the right mechanisms in place at the right time strengthens resilience and the ability to cope with change in coordination needs in complex large-scale environments.ConclusionsOur findings are summarized in an empirically based model that provides a practical approach to analyzing change, aimed at supporting both researchers and practitioners dealing with change in coordination mechanisms in large-scale agile development contexts.

How Large Scale Agile Can Operate Systems Engineering in the Future

ABSTRACTThe significant shift happening today towards more connected, more automated, and more autonomous systems is bringing software inside all systems, and at the same time agile practices. Our experience of large‐scale agile deployments in companies building or operating complex systems in automotive and aerospace shows that, whereas both approaches can easily coexist in isolated teams within the same company, major problems arise when coordinating them at the leadership level, where they are perceived as antagonist, and create misalignments, friction and quality issues. In this article, we propose to describe why it is important to make agile and systems engineering work together, how to do it, and how this impacts how we see value, systems, digital twins, and leadership. The following concepts of the FuSE agile roadmaps are addressed: ▪ Agility with long lead time components and dependencies ▪ Agility across organizations boundaries ▪ Orchestrating agile operations.

Identifying and Categorizing Challenges in Large-Scale Agile Software Development Projects: Insights from Two Swedish Companies

We conducted a case study to examine the challenges encountered in large-scale agile development (LSAD) within two Swedish software companies. While agile methodologies have proven successful in small and medium-sized projects, their implementation in large-scale software development projects can be problematic. To identify these challenges, we employed thematic analysis, which revealed a total of 26 distinct challenges. These challenges were categorized into three main themes: Processes and practices, Teams, and Organizational-level challenges in LSAD. By recognizing and addressing these challenges, projects operating in similar contexts can synchronize their activities and harness the advantages of agile methodologies at a large scale. The article delves into comprehensive discussions on these challenges, offering valuable insights and directions for future research endeavors.

Identifying and Categorizing Challenges in Large-Scale Agile Software Development Projects: Insights from Two Swedish Companies

We conducted a case study to examine the challenges encountered in large-scale agile development (LSAD) within two Swedish software companies. While agile methodologies have proven successful in small and medium-sized projects, their implementation in large-scale software development projects can be problematic. To identify these challenges, we employed thematic analysis, which revealed a total of 26 distinct challenges. These challenges were categorized into three main themes: Processes and practices, Teams, and Organizational-level challenges in LSAD. By recognizing and addressing these challenges, projects operating in similar contexts can synchronize their activities and harness the advantages of agile methodologies at a large scale. The article delves into comprehensive discussions on these challenges, offering valuable insights and directions for future research endeavors.

Lessons Learned From Interdisciplinary Efforts to Combat COVID-19 Misinformation: Development of Agile Integrative Methods From Behavioral Science, Data Science, and Implementation Science.

Despite increasing awareness about and advances in addressing social media misinformation, the free flow of false COVID-19 information has continued, affecting individuals' preventive behaviors, including masking, testing, and vaccine uptake. In this paper, we describe our multidisciplinary efforts with a specific focus on methods to (1) gather community needs, (2) develop interventions, and (3) conduct large-scale agile and rapid community assessments to examine and combat COVID-19 misinformation. We used the Intervention Mapping framework to perform community needs assessment and develop theory-informed interventions. To supplement these rapid and responsive efforts through large-scale online social listening, we developed a novel methodological framework, comprising qualitative inquiry, computational methods, and quantitative network models to analyze publicly available social media data sets to model content-specific misinformation dynamics and guide content tailoring efforts. As part of community needs assessment, we conducted 11 semistructured interviews, 4 listening sessions, and 3 focus groups with community scientists. Further, we used our data repository with 416,927 COVID-19 social media posts to gather information diffusion patterns through digital channels. Our results from community needs assessment revealed the complex intertwining of personal, cultural, and social influences of misinformation on individual behaviors and engagement. Our social media interventions resulted in limited community engagement and indicated the need for consumer advocacy and influencer recruitment. The linking of theoretical constructs underlying health behaviors to COVID-19-related social media interactions through semantic and syntactic features using our computational models has revealed frequent interaction typologies in factual and misleading COVID-19 posts and indicated significant differences in network metrics such as degree. The performance of our deep learning classifiers was reasonable, with an F-measure of 0.80 for speech acts and 0.81 for behavior constructs. Our study highlights the strengths of community-based field studies and emphasizes the utility of large-scale social media data sets in enabling rapid intervention tailoring to adapt grassroots community interventions to thwart misinformation seeding and spread among minority communities. Implications for consumer advocacy, data governance, and industry incentives are discussed for the sustainable role of social media solutions in public health.

A Taxonomy of Inter-Team Coordination Mechanisms in Large-Scale Agile

In large-scale agile software development, many teams work together to achieve overarching project goals. The more teams, the greater the coordination requirements. Despite the growing popularity of large-scale agile, inter-team coordination is challenging to practice and research. We conducted a case study over 1.5 years in a large-scale software development firm to better understand which inter-team coordination mechanisms are used in large-scale agile and how they support inter-team coordination. Based on a thematic analysis of 31 interviews, 113 hours of observations, and supplemental material, we identified 27 inter-team coordination mechanisms. From this, we offer the following contributions. First, we propose a taxonomy of inter-team coordination with three categories: coordination meetings, such as communities of practice, inter-team stand-ups, and retrospectives; coordination roles, such as the program architects and the platform team; and coordination tools and artefacts, such as Slack and JIRA as well as inter-team task boards, product backlogs, and roadmaps. Second, the coordination mechanisms displayed combinations of four key characteristics, technical, organizational, physical, and social (TOPS), which form the basis of the TOPS framework to capture the multifaceted characteristics of coordination mechanisms. <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Technical</i> relates to the software product and/or technical tools supporting software development. <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Organizational</i> pertains to the structural aspects of the organization. <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Physical</i> refers to tangible or spatial characteristics. <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Social</i> captures interpersonal and community-based characteristics. Finally, the taxonomy and the TOPS framework provide a knowledge base and a structured approach for researchers to study as well as for software practitioners to understand and improve inter-team coordination in large-scale agile.

Factors Affecting On-Time Delivery in Large-Scale Agile Software Development

Late delivery of software projects and cost overruns have been common problems in the software industry for decades. Both problems are manifestations of deficiencies in effort estimation during project planning. With software projects being complex socio-technical systems, a large pool of factors can affect effort estimation and on-time delivery. To identify the most relevant factors and their interactions affecting schedule deviations in large-scale agile software development, we conducted a mixed-methods case study at ING: two rounds of surveys revealed a multitude of organizational, people, process, project and technical factors which were then quantified and statistically modeled using software repository data from 185 teams. We find that factors such as requirements refinement, task dependencies, organizational alignment and organizational politics are perceived to have the greatest impact on on-time delivery, whereas proxy measures such as project size, number of dependencies, historical delivery performance and team familiarity can help explain a large degree of schedule deviations. We also discover hierarchical interactions among factors: organizational factors are perceived to interact with people factors, which in turn impact technical factors. We compose our findings in the form of a conceptual framework representing influential factors and their relationships to on-time delivery. Our results can help practitioners identify and manage delay risks in agile settings, can inform the design of automated tools to predict schedule overruns and can contribute towards the development of a relational theory of software project management.

Spatial and Temporal Audience Behavior of Scrum Practitioners Around Semi-Public Ambient Displays

Exploring spatial and temporal audience behavior around ambient displays is an important area of HCI research. It aids in, for instance, understanding better user appropriation in natural environments. However, there are only a few tools to capture said behavior, and simultaneously, little knowledge of the space around ambient display installations exists. In this research, we report on audience behavior observed during an in-the-wild study where we deployed our custom Ambient Surfaces solution in a professional, large-scale agile software development context for circa 5 years. Across 18 weeks in 2017, we collected skeletal data with two Microsoft Kinect v2 cameras resulting in behavior information of more than 30,000 passersby. Our results indicate, among others, that users did show the highest levels of engagement at quite some distance to the Ambient Surfaces and that people engaging in direct interaction did so rather purposely. Ultimately, this article encapsulates our research’s originality in four contributions including an approach to separate passersby from real users and an in-depth exploration of skeletal data. With the tools and methods illustrated, we hope to demonstrate manifold insights for future research on audience behavior tracking.

Changes to team autonomy in large-scale software development: a multiple case study of Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) implementations

Large-scale transformations of agile ways of working have received more attention in the industry in recent years. Some organizations have developed their own solutions for scaling, whereas many have chosen trademarked frameworks. In large-scale agile software development, many developers and development teams carry out work simultaneously. When autonomous teams need to coordinate toward a common goal, they must sacrifice some level of autonomy. Development, testing, and integrations need to be coordinated with other teams and aligned with an organization´s programs or portfolio. Through the conducting of 28 interviews and 17 on-site visits, this multiple case study explored how team autonomy changed in three agile software development organizations that implemented the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). The positive changes to team autonomy that they experienced as a result included getting a better overview, making better long-term decisions, giving and receiving help, and signaling limitations. We found two negative impacts on team autonomy: limited feature choice and enforced refinement. The study extends previous research on large-scale agile software development and improves our understanding of impacts on team autonomy.

To schedule or not to schedule? An investigation of meetings as an inter-team coordination mechanism in largescale agile software development

Coordination of teams is critical when managing large programmes that involve multiple teams. In large-scale software development, work is carried out simultaneously by many developers and development teams. Results are delivered frequently and iteratively, which requires coordination on different levels, e.g., the programme, project, and team levels. Prior studies of knowledge work indicate that such work relies heavily on coordination through "personal" modes such as mutual adjustment between individuals or through scheduled or unscheduled meetings. In agile software development processes, principles and work structures emerge during the project and are not predetermined. We studied how coordination through scheduled and unscheduled meetings changes over time in two large software development programmes relying on agile methods. Our findings include transitions from scheduled to unscheduled meetings and from unscheduled to scheduled meetings. The transitions have been initiated both bottom-up and top-down in the programme organizations. The main implication is that programme management needs to be sensitive to the vital importance of coordination and the coordination needs as they change over time. Further, when starting a program, we recommend to early identify the important scheduled meetings, as having enough scheduled meetings is important to develop a common understanding of domain knowledge.

Spontaneous Utilization: A Classic Grounded Theory of Utilizing Ambient Displays in Professional, Large-Scale Agile Software Development Environments

ABSTRACT This research addresses an interdisciplinary problem area concerning the long-term deployment of socially embedded technology in authentic environments. It concentrates on the case of ambient displays, where long-term research in the real world is still scant and evidentially requires methodological development. This study seeks to advance on this situation at both findings and methodological levels. To this end, we introduce our Ambient Surfaces solution that was deployed in the agile software development department of a company for circa 5 years. Classic grounded theory was chosen to methodologically guide the evaluation, while the theoretical contribution of this work is a substantive theory exemplified by its core category of Spontaneous utilization. The theory reveals insights on how ambient displays are utilized by practitioners in professional and large-scale agile environments. We found, among others, that staff members used the Ambient Surfaces largely not on purpose, that our solution evolved toward having a strong emphasis on progress tracking information, and that inter-team awareness as well as intra-team communication were encouraged.

Finding the sweet spot for organizational control and team autonomy in large-scale agile software development

Agile methods and the related concepts of employee empowerment, self-management, and autonomy have reached large-scale software organizations and raise questions about commonly adopted principles for authority distribution. However, the optimum mechanism to balance the need for alignment, quality, and process control with the need or willingness of teams to be autonomous remains an unresolved issue. In this paper, we report our findings from a multiple-case study in two large-scale software development organizations in the telecom industry. We analysed the autonomy of the agile teams in the organizations using Hackman’s classification of unit authority and found that the teams were partly self-managing. Further, we found that alignment across teams can be achieved top-down by management and bottom-up through membership in communities or through dialogue between the team and management. However, the degree of team autonomy was limited by the need for organizational alignment. Top-down alignment and control were maintained through centralized decision-making for certain areas, the use of supervisory roles, mandatory processes, and checklists. One case employed a bottom-up approach to alignment through the formation of a community composed of all teams, experts, and supporting roles, but excluding managers. This community-based alignment involved teams in decision-making and engaged them in alignment initiatives. We conclude that implementation of such bottom-up structures seems to provide one possible mechanism for balancing organizational control and team autonomy in large-scale software development.

Reinstitutionalization of Project Management Offices by Large-Scale Agile Frameworks

This article contributes to the understanding of project management offices (PMOs) from the current momentum towards large-scale agile frameworks (LSAFs) as the dominating approach to organizing development projects. LSAFs embrace many typical PMO responsibilities; however, this study highlights that PMOs receive new and tentatively critical responsibilities when moving from a stakeholder position (ISO 21500) to (re-)institutionalizing as a core element in the project governance of enterprises. Essential PMO roles can be top-management alignment and reporting, cross-project coordination, funding and staffing, controlling, and external management of “political” and organizational matters. The research limitations relate to the use of Denmark as the key setting and the targeting of mostly larger companies and larger projects.

Large-Scale Agile Frameworks: A Comparative Review

This study aims to identify and systematically compare the main large-scale agile frameworks that companies can adopt to manage the work of large-scale and distributed teams. Through this, companies can more consciously perform a better-informed decision on the choice of the framework that best fits the practices and challenges of their organizations. This work employs a qualitative approach supported by an exploratory analysis that identifies and explores the processes of migration to a large-scale agile. In the first phase, fifteen assessment criteria for scaling agile are discussed. In a second phase, these criteria are used to perform a comparative analysis of six large-scale agile frameworks (i.e., DAD, LeSS, Nexus, SAFe, Scrum at Scale, and Spotify). The findings reveal there isn't a dominant large-scale agile framework in all dimensions. However, it is possible to identify frameworks like Nexus and Spotify that target smaller teams and offer low technical complexity. These frameworks easily accommodate changes, while there are other frameworks like SAFe and DAD that offer high levels of scalability but require more demanding and deep efforts in changing work processes in an organization.

Comparing Methods for Large-Scale Agile Software Development: A Systematic Literature Review

Following the highly pervasive and effective use of agile methods at the team level, many software organisations now wish to replicate this success at the organisational level, adopting large-scale agile methods such as SAFe, Scrum-at-Scale, and others. However, this has proven significantly challenging. An analysis of the extant literature reveals a disparate set of studies across each individual method, with no cross-method comparison based on empirical evidence. This systematic literature review compares the main large-scale agile methods, namely SAFe, LeSS, Scrum-at-Scale, DAD, and the Spotify model. It is the first study to analyse and compare each of the method’s principles, practices, tools, and metrics in a standardised manner. For each method, it presents not just the original method specifications but also all extensions and modifications to each method proposed by subsequent empirical research. It includes in this comparison not just commercial large-scale methods but also those that have been custom-built in organisations such as Nokia, Ericsson, and others. Based on the findings reported in this study, practitioners can make a more informed decision as to which commercial method or method component or, indeed, custom-built method is better suited to their needs. Our study reveals a number of theoretical and practical issues in the current literature, such as an emphasis on the practices of commercial frameworks at the expense of their underlying principles, or indeed any of the custom method. A set of challenges and success factors associated with the use of large-scale agile methods are identified. The study also identifies a number of research gaps to be addressed across methods.

Research Challenges and Opportunities in Conducting Quantitative Studies on Large-Scale Agile Methodology

This research note suggests five research challenges when conducting quantitative studies on large-scale agile methodology (LSAM). First, the LSAM empirical literature, which is mainly characterized by qualitative studies primarily focusing on coordination issues, provides limited background. Second, the notion of “large” in LSAM needs to be clarified because the existing research seems to have focused on “very large” or outlier projects. Third, the popular LSAM methods suggest broad and general maxims that may result in difficulty in operationalizing dependent variables, especially in innovation adoption studies. Fourth, the researcher may get overwhelmed when selecting independent variables from the plethora of suggested constructs. Finally, some of the problems associated with large-scale agile are mostly challenges of using conventional agile during a time-period when LSAM had not formally emerged. Researchers should take a balanced approach considering both benefits and challenges of using LSAM and focusing on project-level dependent measures such as success and acceptance.

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

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