AGILE: Large scale Vs Small Scale projects

It is hard to scale Agile for large-scale project probably because Agile methods were originally designed for small and single-team projects (Boehm and Turner, 2005). With the increase in the size of an organization, the difficulty of introducing agile methodology increases (Dybå and Dingsøyr, 2008).

One main distinction between the small and large scale projects is that the latter depends more amongst the projects and the teams. Due to this arises the requirement of formally documenting the analysis and design, which is not the element of agile methods (Lindvall et al., 2004). Additionally, the communication between the development team and other organizational unit is essential, which is not the property of agile methods. For example, the HR unit might put a restriction of strict role specification in the projects (Boehm and Turner, 2005) or the change control board might require constant refactoring (Lindvall et al., 2004). All the organizational units that are affected by adopting agile methods should be aware and referred first and the agile process must be incorporated based on their requirements.

In addition to inter-team coordination, development teams must interact with other organizational units, which are often non-agile in nature. For instance, human resources unit may demand individuals to have strictly specified roles in projects (, or a change control board may inhibit the use of continuous integration or refactoring (Lindvall et al., 2004). All units affected by the agile transformation need to be informed and consulted, and the agile process must be adjusted according to their needs (Lindvall et al., 2004, Boehm and Turner, 2005). Agile methodology also influences the way business functions. Before adapting to agile methods, an organization would also need to have awareness of shifting from life-cycle models to iterative models and this change needs a variation in both the attitude and cultural thinking. Also the emphasis from long term goals would require changing to short term planning as Agile methods focus on productive short term goals. This might need some planning as usually customer relationships are based on long term objective and planning. This change would also require to create awareness amongst the stakeholders Boehm and Turner, 2005.

Dikert et al. (2016) from their research depicted in the table below the methodologies used by the big companies.

Table 8. Case studies.

Dikert et al. (2016) came up with the following challenges that adapting of agile methods bring in.

The following table depicts the success factors that have been reported for large-scale agile transformations (Dikert et al., 2016).

“The challenge categories that received the most mentions are agile difficult to implement, integrating non-development functions, change resistance, and requirements engineering challenges. The success factor categories that received the most mentions are choosing and customizing the agile approach, management support, mindset and alignment, and training and coaching”.

References:

Boehm, B. and Turner, R. (2005) ‘Management challenges to implementing agile processes in traditional development organizations’, Softw. IEEE, 22 (5) (2005), pp. 30-39.

Dikert, K., Paasivaara, M. and Lassenius, C. (2016) Challenges and success factors for large-scale agile transformations: A systematic literature review. Journal of Systems and Software, 119, pp. 87-108. Available at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0164121216300826 (Accessed: 13 September 2017)

Dybå,T. and Dingsøyr, T. (2008) ‘Empirical studies of agile software development: a systematic review’ Inf. Softw. Technol., 50 (9-10), pp. 833-859.

Lindvall, M., Muthig,D.  , Dagnino,A. , Wallin,C.,   Stupperich,M. , D. Kiefer,D., May,J. and  Kahkonen, T. (2005) Agile software development in large organizations. Computer, 37 (12), pp. 26-34.