Finnish enterprise agile transformations: A survey study

Modern large software-intensive development organizations are nowadays more and more often believed to transform their structures and operations towards large-scale agility in search for higher performances. Based on a survey conducted in Finland in 2018, in this paper we explore the current state of the affairs with respect to how extensively organizations are actually transforming themselves, in what ways this takes place in practice and for what goals. Most of the respondents were in large organizations. The results show that the majority of the surveyed respondents indicated that their organizations have conducted agile transformations or are currently doing so. Different strategies and tactics have been used in the transformations, but markedly the respondents reported most that the company has had external consultants (subcontracting) to assist in the change. The most important goals aimed to be achieved with agile means were productivity and quality (operative) and responsiveness to customer/market changes (new features). Notably only very few respondents reported their organizations to be currently non-agile (do not use at all agile methods in software development).