Why do organizations adopt agile scaling frameworks?-A Survey of practitioners
Loading...
Access rights
openAccess
URL
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Conference article in proceedings
This publication is imported from Aalto University research portal.
View publication in the Research portal (opens in new window)
Other link related to publication (opens in new window)
View publication in the Research portal (opens in new window)
Other link related to publication (opens in new window)
Date
2021-10-11
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Language
en
Pages
12
Series
Proceedings of the 15th ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement, ESEM 2021
Abstract
Background: The benefits of agile methods in small, co-located projects have inspired their adoption in large firms and projects. Scaling frameworks, such as Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS) and the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), have been proposed by practitioners to scale agile to larger contexts, and become rather widely adopted in the industry. Despite the popularity of the frameworks, the knowledge on the reasons, expected benefits, and satisfaction of organizations adopting them is still limited. Aims: This paper presents a study of practitioners who have adopted an agile scaling framework in their organization and investigates the reasons for, expected benefits of, and the satisfaction level with the adoption of the selected framework. Method: We conducted a survey of software practitioners. We received data from 204 respondents representing ten frameworks adopted in 26 countries and located in six continents. Results: The results show that SAFe is the most widely adopted framework among our respondents. The two most commonly mentioned reasons for adopting agile scaling frameworks are to scale to more people and to remain competitive in the market. The most common expected benefits are improving the collaboration and dependency management between teams. We also found some unique reasons and expected benefits for the framework adoption, such as inculcating an agile mindset, addressing the needs of regulated environments, dissolving silos, and technical excellence. Our findings indicated statistically significant differences for reasons, expected benefits, and satisfaction between different frameworks. Most of our respondents report that the selected framework met their expectations. Conclusions: This paper offers the first quantitative assessment of reasons, expected benefits, and satisfaction of firms for adopting agile scaling frameworks. Future studies comparing scaling frameworks could help firms in selecting the most suitable framework fitting their needs.Description
Publisher Copyright: © 2021 IEEE Computer Society. All rights reserved.
Keywords
Agile scaling frameworks, Expected benefits, Reasons, Satisfaction level
Other note
Citation
Putta , A , Uludağ , Ö , Hong , S L , Paasivaara , M & Lassenius , C 2021 , Why do organizations adopt agile scaling frameworks?-A Survey of practitioners . in Proceedings of the 15th ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement, ESEM 2021 . ACM , International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement , Virtual, Online , Italy , 11/10/2021 . https://doi.org/10.1145/3475716.3475788