Scaling agile in large organizations: Practices, challenges, and success factors

摘要

Context: Agile software development has nowadays reached wide adoption. However, movingagile to large-scale contexts is a complex task with many challenges involved. Objective: In thispaper, we review practices, challenges, and success factors for scaling agile both from literatureand within a large software company, identifying the most critical factors. Method: We conducta focused literature review to map the importance of scaling practices, challenges, and successfactors. The outcome of this focused literature review is used to guide action research within asoftware companywith a view to scaling agile processes. Results: Company culture, prior agile andlean experience, management support, and value unification were found to be key success factorsduring the action research process. Resistance to change, an overly aggressive roll-out timeframe, quality assurance concerns, and integration into preexisting nonagile business processeswere found to be the critical challenges in the scaling process. Conclusion: The action research processallowed to cross-fertilize ideas from literature to the company's context. Scaling agile withinan organization does not need to follow a specific scheme, rather the process can be tailored tothe needs while keeping the core values and principles of agile methodologies.