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    Agile Approaches on Large Projects in Large Organizations
    Agile Approaches on Large Projects in Large Organizations
    Agile Approaches on Large Projects in Large Organizations
    Ebook183 pages1 hour

    Agile Approaches on Large Projects in Large Organizations

    By Brian Hobbs and Yvan Petit

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    About this ebook

    Creativity and productivity, rapid adaptation to change, value for the customer—these are just some of the advantages of implementing agile practices in project work. However, agile practices have been most widely and successfully undertaken in the context of small, colocated teams working on small software projects, known as the "agile sweet spot."

    In this monograph, Brian Hobbs and Yvan Petit explore the use and impact of agile outside of the agile sweet spot. Through a case study and survey questionnaire, they uncover research questions that have remained largely unexamined in the literature, on the project level as well as on the organizational level, namely:

    • What challenges are encountered when applying agile approaches to large, multi-team software projects and what practices have been developed to alleviate these challenges?
    • How does the context of large, complex organizations affect the adaptation and adoption of agile approaches and vice versa?

    An illuminating study of this emerging field, Agile Approaches on Large Projects in Large Organizations opens the door to further investigation on the future role of project managers, the use of scaling frameworks at the program and portfolio levels, and the effects of DevOps, one of the recent trends in agile software development.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherProject Management Institute
    Release dateJul 25, 2017
    ISBN9781628253832
    Agile Approaches on Large Projects in Large Organizations

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      Book preview

      Agile Approaches on Large Projects in Large Organizations - Brian Hobbs

      Agile Approaches on Large Projects in Large Organizations

      Brian Hobbs and Yvan Petit

      School of Management, University of Quebec at Montreal

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

      ISBN: 978-1-62825-175-3

      Published by: Project Management Institute, Inc.

      14 Campus Boulevard

      Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073-3299 USA

      Phone: +610-356-4600

      Fax: +610-356-4647

      Email: [email protected]

      Internet: www.PMI.org

      ©2017 Project Management Institute, Inc. All rights reserved.

      Our copyright content is protected by U.S. intellectual property law that is recognized by most countries. To republish or reproduce our content, you must obtain our permission. Please go to http://www.pmi.org/permissions for details.

      PMI, the PMI logo, PMBOK, OPM3, PMP, CAPM, PgMP, PfMP, PMI-RMP, PMI-SP, PMI-ACP, PMI-PBA, PROJECT MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, PM NETWORK, PMI TODAY, PULSE OF THE PROFESSION and the slogan MAKING PROJECT MANAGEMENT INDISPENSABLE FOR BUSINESS RESULTS. are all marks of Project Management Institute, Inc. For a comprehensive list of PMI trademarks, contact the PMI Legal Department. All other trademarks, service marks, trade names, trade dress, product names and logos appearing herein are the property of their respective owners. Any rights not expressly granted herein are reserved.

      To inquire about discounts for resale or educational purposes, please contact the PMI Book Service Center.

      PMI Book Service Center

      P.O. Box 932683, Atlanta, GA 31193-2683 USA

      Phone: 1-866-276-4764 (within the U.S. or Canada) or

      +1-770-280-4129 (globally)

      Fax: +1-770-280-4113

      Email: [email protected]

      Printed in the United States of America. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, manual, photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher.

      The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48—1984).

      10987654321

      Table of Contents

      1Introduction

      2Literature Review

      2.1Agile Approaches

      2.2Benefits of Agile

      2.3Agile and Traditional Project Management Approaches

      2.4Scaling Agility

      2.5Examples of Using Agile at Scale

      2.6Scaling Frameworks

      2.7Challenges of Scaling Up Agile

      2.7.1Organizational Aspects

      2.7.2Technical Aspects and Refactoring

      2.7.3Organizational Culture

      2.7.4Teams

      2.8Summary of the Literature Review

      3Methodology

      3.1The Qualitative Case Studies

      3.2The Survey Instrument

      3.3Data Collection and Analysis

      3.4The Case Study Organizations

      4Results

      4.1Characteristics of Respondents, Their Organizations, and Their Projects

      4.1.1Respondent Demographics

      4.1.2Countries of Users and Producers of Software

      4.1.3Description of the Organizational Context—Private and Public Sectors

      4.1.4Description of the Organizational Context—Organization Size

      4.1.5Description of the Organizational Context—Primary Activity

      4.1.6Description of the Organizational Context—Use of Agile Approach

      4.1.7Description of the Specific Projects

      4.2Implementation of Agile Approaches

      4.2.1Motives for Implementing Agile Approaches

      4.2.2Disadvantages of Agile Approaches

      4.2.3Conditions That Foster and Hinder the Implementation of Agile

      4.2.4Implementation Strategies

      4.2.5The Agile Sweet Spot

      4.2.6Integration with Other Systems

      4.3The Project Front End

      4.3.1Sprint Zero

      4.3.2System Architecture and Front-End Planning

      4.4Project Organizations

      4.4.1Development Teams

      4.4.2New and Modified Organizational Roles

      4.4.3The Role of Product Owners

      4.4.4The Roles of ScrumMasters and Agile Coaches

      4.4.5The Role of Project Managers

      4.4.6The Role of Analysts

      4.4.7The Role of Architects

      4.5The Tools and Techniques Employed

      4.6Scaling Frameworks

      4.7Testing, Integration, and DevOps

      4.8The Portrait Provided by the Results

      5Discussion

      5.1Team Level

      5.2Project Level

      5.3Interaction Between the Project and the Organization

      5.4Conflicts Between Large Traditional Organizations and Agile Principles

      5.5A Period of Experimentation

      6Conclusion

      7Future Research

      Acknowledgments

      References

      Appendix

      About the Authors

      List of Tables

      List of Acronyms

      Executive Summary

      Agile methods have taken software development by storm, but have been primarily applied to projects in what is referred to as the agile sweet spot, which consists of small colocated teams working on small, noncritical, green field, in-house software projects with stable architectures and simple governance rules. The use of agile on large projects in large organizations is a relatively new phenomenon for which clear guidance is not available. There are conflicts between agile principles and traditional software development in large bureaucratic organizations. Organizations are experimenting, as shown by the extreme variability of the responses to most of the survey questions introduced in this study. On average, large organizations have been using agile on large projects for three years. With an average project duration of one-and-a-half years, a large number of organizations have completed only a small number of large agile projects. Many large organizations are therefore still at a stage of experimental implementation.

      Because many large organizations are currently experimenting with agile, the results are somewhat paradoxical in that some features are common to almost all observations, while others show extreme variability. The common features include use of Scrum methodology and agile coaches as well as the disregard of the agile principle of emergent architecture.

      One of the most important emergent phenomena from a project management perspective is the modifications being made to the role of the project manager. One element that is relatively clear is that self-organizing Scrum development teams have a major role in the detailed planning and monitoring of project execution and that project managers are, therefore, devoting less effort to this type of activity. Project managers typically have a role in the coordination of multiple development teams. However, some contexts report that project managers are putting more effort into this activity, while others report that they are putting less. It is not clear under what conditions each of these tendencies is prevalent. In many organizations, the project manager role has become more strategic and more centered on stakeholder management. In a minority of cases, the project manager role has been abolished. As this is an emergent phenomenon, it is too early to know what the long-term effects on the project manager role will be. As the situation is evolving quickly, more research will be required.

      CHAPTER 1

      Introduction

      Agile has taken software development by storm since the publication of the Agile Manifesto (Agile Alliance, 2001). In recent years, agile methodologies have become highly prevalent in the software industry (Abrahamsson, Conboy, & Xiaofeng, 2009; Dingsøyr, Nerur, Balijepally, & Moe, 2012). Today, it is one of the hottest topics in project management; Project Management Institute (PMI) has created the PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)® certification and Project Management Journal ® has published a special issue on the topic. (Note that the special issue and this research monograph will likely be published at approximately the same time. For a summary of the present research, see Hobbs and Petit [2017].)

      Although there have been multiple attempts to apply agile principles to non-software projects (Conforto, Salum, Amaral, da Silva, & de Almeida, 2014; Highsmith, 2003; Petit & Levesque, 2015), this research is limited to the field of software development—the field where agile has become prominent. It focuses on two levels of analysis: the individual project and the organizational context in which projects are carried out. The agile literature has focused almost exclusively on the former, while almost completely ignoring the latter.

      The advantages of using agile identified in the literature include: a working environment that supports creativity and productivity, rapid adaptation to change, and value for the customer because of better identification of needs and priorities and faster multiple deliveries of functionalities (Schwaber, 2004; Thomke & Reinertsen, 1998). These advantages are more readily obtained with certain types of projects in certain contexts. Kruchten (2013) identified what is

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