Agile Approaches on Large Projects in Large Organizations

Agile Approaches on Large Projects in Large Organizations

by Brian Hobbs, Yvan Petit
Released August 2017
Publisher(s): Project Management Institute
ISBN: 9781628253832

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Book description

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.

Table of contents

  1. Cover Page
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Table of Contents
  5. List of Tables
  6. List of Acronyms
  7. Executive Summary
  8. 1 - Introduction
  9. 2 - Literature Review
    1. 2.1 Agile Approaches
    2. 2.2 Benefits of Agile
    3. 2.3 Agile and Traditional Project Management Approaches
    4. 2.4 Scaling Agility
    5. 2.5 Examples of using Agile at Scale
    6. 2.6 Scaling Frameworks
    7. 2.7 Challenges of Scaling up Agile
      1. 2.7.1 Organizational Aspects
      2. 2.7.2 Technical Aspects and Refactoring
      3. 2.7.3 Organizational Culture
      4. 2.7.4 Teams
    8. 2.8 Summary of the Literature Review
  10. 3 - Methodology
    1. 3.1 The Qualitative Case Studies
    2. 3.2 The Survey Instrument
    3. 3.3 Data Collection and Analysis
    4. 3.4 The Case Study Organizations
  11. 4 - Results
    1. 4.1 Characteristics of Respondents, Their Organizations, and their Projects
      1. 4.1.1 Respondent Demographics
      2. 4.1.2 Countries of Users and Producers of Software
      3. 4.1.3 Description of the Organizational Context—Private and Public Sectors
      4. 4.1.4 Description of the Organizational Context—Organization Size
      5. 4.1.5 Description of the Organizational Context—Primary Activity
      6. 4.1.6 Description of the Organizational Context—Use of Agile Approach
      7. 4.1.7 Description of the Specific Projects
    2. 4.2 Implementation of Agile Approaches
      1. 4.2.1 Motives for Implementing Agile Approaches
      2. 4.2.2 Disadvantages of Agile Approaches
      3. 4.2.3 Conditions that Foster and Hinder the Implementation of Agile
      4. 4.2.4 Implementation Strategies
      5. 4.2.5 The Agile Sweet Spot
      6. 4.2.6 Integration with other Systems
    3. 4.3 The Project Front End
      1. 4.3.1 Sprint Zero
      2. 4.3.2 System Architecture and Front-End Planning
    4. 4.4 Project Organizations
      1. 4.4.1 Development Teams
      2. 4.4.2 New and Modified Organizational Roles
      3. 4.4.3 The Role of Product Owners
      4. 4.4.4 The Roles of ScrumMasters and Agile Coaches
      5. 4.4.5 The Role of Project Managers
      6. 4.4.6 The Role of Analysts
      7. 4.4.7 The Role of Architects
    5. 4.5 The Tools and Techniques Employed
    6. 4.6 Scaling Frameworks
    7. 4.7 Testing, Integration, and DevOps
    8. 4.8 The Portrait Provided by the Results
  12. 5 - Discussion
    1. 5.1 Team Level
    2. 5.2 Project Level
    3. 5.3 Interaction between the Project and the Organization
    4. 5.4 Conflicts between Large Traditional Organizations and Agile Principles
    5. 5.5 A Period of Experimentation
  13. 6 - Conclusion
  14. 7 - Future Research
  15. Acknowledgments
  16. References
  17. Appendix
  18. About the Authors

Product information

  • Title: Agile Approaches on Large Projects in Large Organizations
  • Author(s): Brian Hobbs, Yvan Petit
  • Release date: August 2017
  • Publisher(s): Project Management Institute
  • ISBN: 9781628253832