TY - JOUR
T1 - Challenges and success factors for large-scale agile transformations
T2 - A systematic literature review
AU - Dikert, Kim
AU - Paasivaara, Maria
AU - Lassenius, Casper
PY - 2016/9/1
Y1 - 2016/9/1
N2 - Agile methods have become an appealing alternative for companies striving to improve their performance, but the methods were originally designed for small and individual teams. This creates unique challenges when introducing agile at scale, when development teams must synchronize their activities, and there might be a need to interface with other organizational units. In this paper we present a systematic literature review on how agile methods and lean software development has been adopted at scale, focusing on reported challenges and success factors in the transformation. We conducted a systematic literature review of industrial large-scale agile transformations. Our keyword search found 1875 papers. We included 52 publications describing 42 industrial cases presenting the process of taking large-scale agile development into use. Almost 90% of the included papers were experience reports, indicating a lack of sound academic research on the topic. We identified 35 reported challenges grouped into nine categories, and 29 success factors, grouped into eleven categories. The most salient success factor categories were management support, choosing and customizing the agile model, training and coaching, and mindset and alignment.
AB - Agile methods have become an appealing alternative for companies striving to improve their performance, but the methods were originally designed for small and individual teams. This creates unique challenges when introducing agile at scale, when development teams must synchronize their activities, and there might be a need to interface with other organizational units. In this paper we present a systematic literature review on how agile methods and lean software development has been adopted at scale, focusing on reported challenges and success factors in the transformation. We conducted a systematic literature review of industrial large-scale agile transformations. Our keyword search found 1875 papers. We included 52 publications describing 42 industrial cases presenting the process of taking large-scale agile development into use. Almost 90% of the included papers were experience reports, indicating a lack of sound academic research on the topic. We identified 35 reported challenges grouped into nine categories, and 29 success factors, grouped into eleven categories. The most salient success factor categories were management support, choosing and customizing the agile model, training and coaching, and mindset and alignment.
KW - Adopting agile software development
KW - Agile software development
KW - Challenges
KW - Large-scale agile
KW - Organizational transformation
KW - Success factors
KW - Systematic literature review
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84975144622&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.jss.2016.06.013
DO - 10.1016/j.jss.2016.06.013
M3 - Review Article
AN - SCOPUS:84975144622
SN - 0164-1212
VL - 119
SP - 87
EP - 108
JO - Journal of Systems and Software
JF - Journal of Systems and Software
ER -