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Agile Case Studies: Examples Across Various Industires

Home Blog Agile Agile Case Studies: Examples Across Various Industires

Agile methodologies have gained significant popularity in project management and product development. Various industries have successfully applied Agile principles , showcasing experiences, challenges, and benefits. Case studies demonstrate Agile's versatility in software development, manufacturing, and service sectors. These real-world examples offer practical insights into Agile implementation, challenges faced, and strategies to overcome them. Agile case studies provide valuable inspiration for implementing these methodologies in any project, regardless of the organization's size or industry.

Who Uses Agile Methodology?

Agile methodology is used by a wide variety of organizations, including:

• Software development companies use Agile to improve collaboration, increase flexibility, and deliver high-quality software incrementally.
• IT departments use agile to manage and execute projects efficiently, respond to changing requirements, and deliver value to stakeholders in a timely manner.
• Startups use agile to quickly adapt to market changes and iterate on product development based on customer feedback.
• Marketing and advertising agencies use agile to enhance campaign management, creative development, and customer engagement strategies.
• Product development teams use agile to iterate, test, and refine their designs and manufacturing processes.
• Project management teams use agile to enhance project execution , facilitate collaboration, and manage complex projects with changing requirements.
• Retail companies use agile to develop new marketing campaigns and improve their website and e-commerce platform.

Agile Case Study Examples

1. moving towards agile: managing loxon solutions.

Following is an Agile case study in banking :

Loxon Solutions, a Hungarian technology startup in the banking software industry, faced several challenges in its journey towards becoming an agile organization. As the company experienced rapid growth, it struggled with its hiring strategy, organizational development, and successful implementation of agile practices. 

How was it solved:

Loxon Solutions implemented a structured recruitment process with targeted job postings and rigorous interviews to attract skilled candidates. They restructured the company into cross-functional teams, promoting better collaboration. Agile management training and coaching were provided to all employees, with online courses playing a crucial role. Agile teams with trained Scrum Masters and Product Owners were established, and agile ceremonies like daily stand-ups were introduced to enhance collaboration and transparency.

2. Contributions of Entrepreneurial Orientation in the Use of Agile Methods in Project Management

This Agile project management case study aims to analyze the degree of contribution of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) in the use of agile methods (AM) in project management. The study focuses on understanding how EO influences the adoption and effectiveness of agile methods within organizations. Through a detailed case study, we explore the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and Agile methods, shedding light on the impact of entrepreneurial behaviors on project management practices.

A technology consulting firm faced multiple challenges in project management efficiency and responsiveness to changing client requirements. This specific problem was identified because of the limited use of Agile methods in project management, which hindered the company's ability to adapt quickly and deliver optimal outcomes.

Entrepreneurial orientation (EO) is a multidimensional construct that describes the extent to which an organization engages in entrepreneurial behaviors. The technology firm acknowledged the significance of entrepreneurial orientation in promoting agility and innovation in project management. 

The five dimensions of Entreprenurial orientation were applied across the organization.

• Cultivating Innovativeness: The technology consulting firm encouraged a culture of innovativeness and proactiveness, urging project teams to think creatively, identify opportunities, and take proactive measures. 
• Proactiveness: Employees were empowered to generate new ideas, challenge traditional approaches, and explore alternative solutions to project challenges. This helped them to stay ahead of the competition and to deliver the best possible results for their customers.
• Encouraging Risk-Taking: The organization promoted a supportive environment that encouraged calculated risk-taking and autonomy among project teams. Employees were given the freedom to make decisions and take ownership of their projects, fostering a sense of responsibility and accountability.
• Autonomy: Agile teams were given the autonomy to make decisions and take risks. This helped them to be more innovative and to deliver better results.
• Nurturing Competitive Aggressiveness: The technology firm instilled a competitive aggressiveness in project teams, motivating them to strive for excellence and deliver superior results.

3. Improving Team Performance and Engagement

How do you ensure your team performs efficiently without compromising on quality? Agile is a way of working that focuses on value to the customer and continuous improvement. Integrating Agile in your work will not only make the team efficient but will also ensure quality work. Below is a case study that finds how agile practices can help teams perform better.

The problem addressed in this case study is the need to understand the relationship between the Agile way of working and improving team performance and engagement. We see that teams often face challenges in their daily work. It could be a slow turnover due to bad time management, compromised quality due to lack of resources, or in general lack of collaboration. In the case study below, we will understand how adopting agile practices makes teams work collaboratively, improve quality and have a customer-focused approach to work.

How it was Solved:

A number of factors mediated the relationship between agile working and team performance and engagement. 

• Create a culture of trust and transparency. Agile teams need to be able to trust each other and share information openly. This will help to create a sense of collaboration and ownership. This in turn can lead to increased performance and engagement. 
• Foster communication and collaboration. Effective communication within the team and with stakeholders helps everyone be on the same page.
• Empower team members. Agile teams need to be empowered to make decisions and to take risks. 
• Provide regular feedback. Team members need to receive regular feedback on their performance. This helps them to identify areas where they need improvement. 
• Celebrate successes. By celebrating successes, both big and small, team members are motivated. This in turn creates a positive work environment. 
• Provide training and development opportunities. help the team to stay up to date on the latest trends and to improve their skills. 
• Encourage continuous improvement: Promoting a culture of continuous improvement helps the team to stay ahead of the competition and to deliver better results for their customers. 

It was concluded that agile ways of working can have a positive impact on employee engagement and team performance. Teams that used agile methods were more likely to report high levels of performance and engagement.

4. $65 Million Electric Utility Project Completed Ahead of Schedule and Under Budget

Xcel Energy faced a significant challenge in meeting the Reliability Need required by the Southwest Power Pool in New Mexico. The company had committed to constructing a new 34-mile, 345-kilovolt transmission line within a strict budget of $65 million and a specific timeline. Additionally, the project had to adhere to Bureau of Land Management (BLM) environmental requirements. These constraints posed a challenge to Xcel Energy in terms of project management and resource allocation.

A PM Solutions consultant with project management and utility industry experience was deployed to Xcel Energy.

The PM Solutions consultant deployed to Xcel adapted to the organization's structure and processes, integrating into the Project Management functional organization. He utilized years of project management and utility industry experience to provide valuable insights and guidance.

• Collaborative and social skills were used to address roadblocks and mitigate risks.
• Focused on identifying and addressing roadblocks and risks to ensure timely project delivery.
• Vendor, design, and construction meetings were organized to facilitate communication and collaboration.
• Monitored and expedited long-lead equipment deliveries to maintain project schedule.
• Design and Construction milestones and commitments were closely monitored through field visits.
• Actively tracked estimates, actual costs, and change orders to control project budget .
• Assisted functional areas in meeting their commitments and resolving challenges.

The project was completed eleven days ahead of schedule and approximately $4 million under budget. The management team recognized the project as a success since it went as planned, meeting all technical and quality requirements. 

5. Lean product development and agile project management in the construction industry

The construction industry, specifically during the design stage, has not widely embraced Lean Project Delivery (LPD) and Agile Project Management (APM) practices. This limited adoption delays the industry's progress in enhancing efficiency, productivity, and collaboration in design.

• Integrated project delivery and collaborative contracts: Collaborative contracts were implemented to incentivize teamwork and shared project goals, effectively breaking down silos and fostering a collaborative culture within the organization.
• Lean principles in design processes: Incorporating Lean principles into design processes was encouraged to promote lean thinking and identify non-value-adding activities, bottlenecks, and process inefficiencies. 
• Agile methodologies and cross-functional teams: Agile methodologies and cross-functional teams were adopted to facilitate iterative and adaptive design processes. 
• Digital tools and technologies: The organization embraced digital tools and technologies, such as collaborative project management software , Building Information Modeling (BIM), and cloud-based platforms. 
• A culture of innovation and learning: A culture of innovation and learning was promoted through training and workshops on Lean Project Delivery (LPD) and Agile Project Management (APM) methodologies. Incorporating Agile management training, such as KnowledgeHut Agile Training online , further enhanced the team's ability to implement LPD and APM effectively. 
• Clear project goals and metrics: Clear project goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) were established, aligning with LPD and APM principles. Regular monitoring and measurement of progress against these metrics helped identify areas for improvement and drive accountability.
• Industry best practices and case studies: industry best practices and case studies were explored, and guidance was sought from experts to gain valuable insights into effective strategies and techniques for implementation.

6. Ambidexterity in Agile Software Development (ASD) Projects

An organization in the software development industry aims to enhance their understanding of the tensions between exploitation (continuity) and exploration (change) within Agile software development (ASD) project teams. They seek to identify and implement ambidextrous strategies to effectively balance these two aspects.

How it was solved:

• Recognizing tensions: Teams were encouraged to understand and acknowledge the inherent tensions between exploitation and exploration in Agile projects.
• Fostering a culture of ambidexterity: The organization created a culture that values both stability and innovation, emphasizing the importance of balancing the two.
• Balancing resource allocation: Resources were allocated between exploitation and exploration activities, ensuring a fair distribution to support both aspects effectively.
• Supporting knowledge sharing : Team members were encouraged to share their expertise and lessons learned from both exploitation and exploration, fostering a culture of continuous learning.
• Promoting cross-functional collaboration: Collaboration between team members involved in both aspects was facilitated, allowing for cross-pollination of ideas and insights.
• Establishing feedback mechanisms: Feedback loops were implemented to evaluate the impact of exploitation and exploration efforts, enabling teams to make data-driven decisions and improvements.
• Developing flexible processes: Agile practices that supported both stability and innovation, such as iterative development and adaptive planning, were adopted to ensure flexibility and responsiveness.
• Providing leadership support: Leaders promoted and provided necessary resources for the adoption of agile practices, demonstrating their commitment to ambidexterity.
• Encouraging experimentation: An environment that encouraged risk-taking and the exploration of new ideas was fostered, allowing teams to innovate and try new approaches.
• Continuous improvement: Regular assessments and adaptations of agile practices were conducted based on feedback and evolving project needs, enabling teams to continuously improve their ambidextrous strategies.

7. Problem and Solutions for PM Governance Combined with Agile Tools in Financial Services Programs

Problem: The consumer finance company faced challenges due to changing state and federal regulatory compliance requirements, resulting in the need to reinvent their custom-built storefront and home office systems. The IT and PMO teams were not equipped to handle the complexities of developing new systems, leading to schedule overruns, turnover of staff and technologies, and the need to restart projects multiple times.

How it was Solved: 

To address these challenges, the company implemented several solutions with the help of PM Solutions:

• Back to Basics Approach: A senior-level program manager was brought in to conduct a full project review and establish stakeholder ownership and project governance. This helped refocus the teams on the project's objectives and establish a clear direction.
• Agile Techniques and Sprints: The company gradually introduced agile techniques, starting with a series of sprints to develop "proof of concept" components of the system. Agile methodologies allowed for more flexibility and quicker iterations, enabling faster progress.
• Expanded Use of JIRA: The company utilized Atlassian's JIRA system, which was already in place for operational maintenance, to support the new development project. PM Solutions expanded the use of JIRA by creating workflows and tools specifically tailored to the agile approach, improving timeliness and success rates for delivered work.
• Kanban Approach: A Kanban approach was introduced to help pace the work and track deliveries. This visual management technique enabled project management to monitor progress, manage workloads effectively, and report updates to stakeholders.
• Organizational Change Management: PM Solutions assisted the company in developing an organizational change management system. This system emphasized early management review of requirements and authorizations before work was assigned. By involving company leadership in prioritization and resource utilization decisions, the workload for the IT department was reduced, and focus was placed on essential tasks and priorities.

8. Insurance Company Cuts Cycle Time by 20% and Saves Nearly $5 Million Using Agile Project Management Practices

In this Agile Scrum case study, the insurance company successfully implemented Agile Scrum methodology for their software development projects , resulting in significant improvements in project delivery and overall team performance.

The insurance company faced challenges with long project cycles, slow decision-making processes, and lack of flexibility in adapting to changing customer demands. These issues resulted in higher costs, delayed project deliveries, and lower customer satisfaction levels.

• Implementation of Agile Practices: To address these challenges, the company decided to transition from traditional project management approaches to Agile methodologies. The key steps in implementing Agile practices were as follows:
• Executive Sponsorship: The company's leadership recognized the need for change and provided full support for the Agile transformation initiative. They appointed Agile champions and empowered them to drive the adoption of Agile practices across the organization.
• Training and Skill Development: Agile training programs were conducted to equip employees with the necessary knowledge and skills. Training covered various Agile frameworks, such as Scrum and Kanban, and focused on enhancing collaboration, adaptive planning, and iterative development.
• Agile Team Formation: Cross-functional Agile teams were formed, consisting of individuals with diverse skill sets necessary to deliver projects end-to-end. These teams were self-organizing and empowered to make decisions, fostering a sense of ownership and accountability.
• Agile Project Management Tools: The company implemented Agile project management tools and platforms to facilitate communication, collaboration, and transparency. These tools enabled real-time tracking of project progress, backlog management, and seamless coordination among team members.

9. Agile and Generic Work Values of British vs Indian IT Workers

Problem: 

In this Agile transformation case study, the problem identified is the lack of effective communication and alignment within an IT firm unit during the transformation towards an agile work culture. The employees from different cultural backgrounds had different perceptions and understanding of what it means to be agile, leading to clashes in behaviors and limited team communication. This situation undermined morale, trust, and the sense of working well together.

The study suggests that the cultural background of IT employees and managers, influenced by different national values and norms, can impact the adoption and interpretation of agile work values.

• Leadership: Leaders role-modeled the full agile mindset, along with cross-cultural skills. They demonstrated teamwork, justice, equality, transparency, end-user orientation, helpful leadership, and effective communication . 
• Culture: Managers recognized and appreciated the cultural diversity within the organization. Cultural awareness and sensitivity training were provided to help employees and managers understand and appreciate the diverse cultural backgrounds within the organization.
• Agile values : The importance of agile work values was emphasized, including shared responsibility, continuous learning and improvement, self-organizing teamwork, fast fact-based decision-making, empowered employees, and embracing change. Managers actively promoted and reinforced these values in their leading and coaching efforts to cultivate an agile mindset among employees.
• Transformation: A shift was made from a centralized accountability model to a culture of shared responsibility. Participation in planning work projects was encouraged, and employees were empowered to choose their own tasks within the context of the team's objectives.
• Roadmap: An agile transformation roadmap was developed and implemented, covering specific actions and milestones to accelerate the adoption of agile ways of working. 
• Senior management received necessary support, training, and additional management consultancy to drive the agile transformation effectively.

Benefits of Case Studies for Professionals

Case studies provide several benefits for professionals in various fields: 

• Real-world Application: Agile methodology examples and case studies offer insights into real-life situations, allowing professionals to see how theoretical concepts and principles are applied in practice.
• Learning from Success and Failure: Agile transformation case studies often present both successful and failed projects or initiatives. By examining these cases, professionals can learn from the successes and avoid the mistakes made in the failures.
• Problem-solving and Decision-making Skills: Case studies present complex problems or challenges that professionals need to analyze and solve. By working through these cases, professionals develop critical thinking, problem-solving, and decision-making skills. 
• Building Expertise: By studying cases that are relevant to their area of expertise, professionals can enhance their knowledge and become subject matter experts. 
• Professional Development: Analyzing and discussing case studies with peers or mentors promotes professional development.
• Practical Application of Concepts: Teams can test their understanding of concepts, methodologies, and best practices by analyzing and proposing solutions for the challenges presented in the cases. 
• Continuous Learning and Adaptation: By studying these cases, professionals can stay updated on industry trends, best practices, and emerging technologies. 

In conclusion, agile methodology case studies are valuable tools for professionals in various fields. The real-world examples and insights into specific problems and solutions, allow professionals to learn from others' experiences and apply those learning their own work. Case studies offer a deeper understanding of complex situations, highlighting the challenges faced, the strategies employed, and the outcomes achieved.

The benefits of case studies for professionals are numerous. They offer an opportunity to analyze and evaluate different approaches, methodologies, and best practices. Case studies also help professionals develop critical thinking skills, problem-solving abilities, and decision-making capabilities through practical scenarios and dilemmas to navigate.

Overall, agile case study examples offer professionals the opportunity to gain practical wisdom and enhance their professional development. Studying real-life examples helps professionals acquire valuable insights, expand their knowledge base, and improve their problem-solving abilities.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Three examples of Agile methodologies are:

Scrum: Scrum is one of the most widely used Agile frameworks. It emphasizes iterative and incremental development, with a focus on delivering value to the customer in short, time-boxed iterations called sprints. 

Kanban: Kanban is a visual Agile framework that aims to optimize workflow efficiency and promote continuous delivery.

Lean: Lean is a philosophy and Agile approach focused on maximizing value while minimizing waste. 

• People over process: Agile values the people involved in software development, and emphasizes communication and collaboration.
• Working software over documentation: Agile prioritizes delivering working software over extensive documentation.
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation: Agile values close collaboration with customers and stakeholders throughout the development process.
• Responding to change over following a plan: Agile recognizes that change is inevitable, and encourages flexibility and adaptability.

The six phases in Agile are:

• Initiation: Define the project and assemble the team.
• Planning: Create a plan for how to achieve the project's goals.
• Development: Build the product or service in short sprints.
• Testing: Ensure the product or service meets requirements.
• Deployment: Release the product or service to the customer.
• Maintenance: Support the product or service with bug fixes, new features, and improvements.

Lindy Quick

Lindy Quick, SPCT, is a dynamic Transformation Architect and Senior Business Agility Consultant with a proven track record of success in driving agile transformations. With expertise in multiple agile frameworks, including SAFe, Scrum, and Kanban, Lindy has led impactful transformations across diverse industries such as manufacturing, defense, insurance/financial, and federal government. Lindy's exceptional communication, leadership, and problem-solving skills have earned her a reputation as a trusted advisor. Currently associated with KnowledgeHut and upGrad, Lindy fosters Lean-Agile principles and mindset through coaching, training, and successful execution of transformations. With a passion for effective value delivery, Lindy is a sought-after expert in the field.

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7 Successful Agile Methodologies Cases in Big Companies

Agile methodologies are increasingly among the most talked about subjects when it comes to business management. Many organizations are changing their mindsets to focus on efficient development , expanding value delivery.

These cutting-edge methodologies help increase productivity within employees and create a cultural way of working. Although these giant companies have enormous amounts of revenues, they keep growing financially.

Even though Agile Methodologies made a huge impact on the development of their employees’ works, these companies had already customers awareness.

In this article, you will see 7 cases of big companies that implemented Agile Methodologies and got incredible results from using them.

7 Giant Companies that use Agile Methodologies

The agile methodology provided by Sony greatly supports establishing a modern software development and project management process. It works based on the Scrum approach in a project that has a highly complex project context and risks.

Sony looked for easy-to-understand software development and project management process that was lightweight.  It would help cultivate teamwork and would conduct a brief survey of potential consulting firms through the Internet search.

The introduction of Scrum led to the goal of having a defined project managemen t and development process. Sony’s teams achieved a high level of teamwork by collaborating with project partners.

The famous LEGO toy company started its agile approach starting with teams. 20 product teams were working across the organization at the start of the Agile implementation and it turned to 5 of them into self-organizing Scrum teams. Gradually the other teams were being progressively transformed as Scrum took effect.

Initially, although individual teams had become agile, they were still unable to cooperate effectively. LEGO followed the SAFe structure pattern and from there began to see results.

At LEGO, the team of teams met every 8 weeks for a big room planning session, which lasted a day and a half. The teams presented their work, worked out the dependencies, estimated the risks, and planned the next release period.

There is also the portfolio level, which is the top layer of the system. This is where you have long-term business plans, stakeholders, and senior management. This division into organizational levels is typical of the SAFe structure.

The agile implementation was placed in a Siemens Digital Factory with around 50 employees. The function of this plan is to develop software automation systems used by manufacturers all over the world.

The situation was ideal for agile methods because they were designed to meet the challenges the company was going through.

The results already appeared in the first review after just 2 weeks. Seeing empirical control of the process in practice gave everyone a morale boost.

These changes not only inspired behavior change but also began to nurture deeper attitudes and culture more suited to an iterative and incremental approach; cooperation, experimentation, trust, and responsibility.

The agile implementation at CISCO addressed a specific product: the Subscription Charging Platform.

The team held the Daily’s, a 15-minute meeting every start of the day to align progress and determine work items. With SAFe, they gained greater transparency.

Each team knew what the other teams were doing and the teams were able to manage themselves . These activities made the team promote accountability through updates and status awareness.

At Google, several sectors are betting on agile methods of software development, such as Scrum, creating and testing services and products. Each team chooses the technology and method that can best be applied to problem-solving.

One of the projects in which the Scrum methodology was used was in the development of  GoogleAdwords, for example.

Yahoo! has bet on reducing time spent developing software while managing team size.  And they were successful with Agile Methodology, especially using Scrum.

They plan, create, and test different products and services over a certain period of days, to improve and increasingly leverage the technology used by them and offered to the public.

This company operates in more than 120 countries in aerospace, semiconductors, power generation, and distribution, among others.

The Agile approach started in Japan, although the company knew that it would take time to adapt to Agile forms and integrate with other departments. At the company’s headquarters,  teams helped to continue the approach until it extended to other factories.

The Agile approach was made through workshops on an agile methodology that taught practices and approaches to the methodology, where employees were involved and were able to implement in each of the company’s departments.

How to start an agile culture in the company

• Don’t skip the simple things: Before adopting the methodology, you need to think about why you want it in your company. Being an agile company is not just about studying and relying on experts, but talking to executives who are already mature in this approach.
• Start with a pilot project: Launching pilot projects can help the company understand what real gains the chosen area has made. Thus, the organization can launch agile teams that will help, based on the success case, in the construction of an operating model that works remotely.
• Promote changes: mainly in the human aspects. Agile development is not about new reporting structures and post-its, but about having engaged people and technologies that enable them for dynamic modeling and quick decisions.
• Putting people above processes: Agile is a fundamental shift in culture and expectations. For employees, this journey needs to be transformative rather than disruptive. Remote work increases the need to double communication , support connections between humans, and provide practical support to people during this transition.

Agile methodologies allow continuous delivery of value

One of the main differentials that agile methodologies provide for companies that decide to adopt them is the continuous delivery of value.

Learning is one of the strengths of agile methodologies because, with continuous deliverables, any mistake is no longer a simple mistake and becomes something to add as an observation for the next deliverables, even in the project itself.

You save time and it is also possible to reduce production costs. Of course, all the scaling of resources is designed for the possibilities of change. Thus avoiding an emergency effort that could generate future expenses.

Not to mention that, in the case of a common delivery, there is a chance that the entire project will fail, which would mean a significant cost for the rework.

Agile companies become more prepared for the market

Companies that use them are more adaptable, and can better handle changes as needed. Digital transformation involves systems integration and other views of business management, among which stands out.

In addition, an agile company places the customer as the main focus for value delivery , inserting it more directly into the development chain.

Thus, it is possible to get to know them better and find out what they want. Also, you can adapt organizational processes, and offer more assertive services and products to the market.

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Agile in Action: Inspiring Real-World Examples of Agile Methodologies

By thinkful.

Are you an aspiring project management student eager to stand out in the ever-evolving industry? Say hello to Agile project management—a game-changing approach revolutionizing how teams collaborate, adapt, and deliver exceptional products. In this enthralling guide, we'll unveil the secrets of Agile, spotlight its remarkable benefits, and offer a step-by-step roadmap to help you excel in your future career. So, let's dive into the captivating world of Agile and kickstart your journey to success!

Agile Project Management: The Future of the Industry

Imagine being part of a movement transforming project management by emphasizing adaptability, teamwork, and continuous growth. That's Agile! By embracing Agile, you'll confidently navigate the rapidly changing landscape, tackle project demands head-on, and stay ahead of the competition. The perfect time to incorporate Agile methodologies into your studies is now—unlock the full potential of your technical projects and skyrocket your career prospects.

Discover the Agile Advantage: The Benefits That Await You

Choosing Agile as your project management ally opens up a realm of powerful benefits, setting the stage for a successful future in the industry. Here's a glimpse of the exciting journey that lies ahead:

1. Embrace Adaptability: Agile empowers you with the skills to swiftly adjust to change, ensuring your projects stay on track even when faced with unexpected hurdles.

2. Boost Communication & Collaboration: Agile cultivates a harmonious environment, helping you work seamlessly with your team to make smarter decisions and resolve problems efficiently.

3. Commit to Continuous Improvement: Agile's incremental development mindset pushes you to constantly refine your work, leading to impeccable final products that make an impact.

4. Win Over Customers: Agile's customer-first approach guarantees that the products you deliver don't just meet expectations—they surpass them, fostering long-lasting relationships with your clients.

5. Empower Your Future: Agile inspires you to take charge of your projects, leading to increased job satisfaction and a more driven, fulfilling career.

Agile Methodologies: Find Your Perfect Match

As you embark on your project management studies, you'll encounter various Agile frameworks, including Scrum, Kanban, Lean, and Extreme Programming (XP). Each offers unique strengths tailored to different project types and team dynamics. Explore these methodologies and discover the one that resonates with your personal goals and vision.

Scrum: Achieving Success in Sprints

Scrum is arguably the most celebrated Agile framework, focusing on compact development cycles known as Sprints, which typically span 1 to 4 weeks. Scrum propels teams to prioritize tasks, validate features promptly, and secure a triumphant project outcome. The Scrum Master, Product Owner, and Development Team are the essential roles in this framework, collaborating to drive success.

Kanban: Visualizing Workflow for Peak Efficiency

Kanban, another powerful Agile framework, prioritizes visualizing work in progress and limiting its scope to match the team's capacity. Teams can quickly identify bottlenecks and optimize their workflow using a Kanban board. This methodology is ideal for teams that value flexibility, speed, and transparency.

Lean: Streamlining Processes for Maximum Value

Lean principles, originating from the Toyota Production System, have been adapted for software engineering to eliminate waste and deliver maximum value with minimal effort. Lean focuses on continuous learning, fast delivery, and team empowerment. This methodology is perfect for small, short-term projects or scenarios that require ongoing customer feedback.

Extreme Programming (XP): Elevating Code Quality and Adaptability

Extreme Programming (XP) stands out by focusing on technical excellence in software development. With rigorous engineering practices like test-driven development, continuous integration, and pair programming, XP helps teams produce high-quality code that remains adaptable in the face of change.

Your Blueprint to Agile Success

Eager to embrace Agile project management and unlock your team's full potential? Here's your comprehensive guide to Agile project management success:

1. Establish a Solid Understanding and Support Base: Before setting sail on your Agile adventure, ensure that your team, managers, and stakeholders comprehend the benefits of Agile methodologies and are wholeheartedly committed to the transition. Cultivate a culture of collaboration and ongoing improvement by transparently communicating the perks of Agile and addressing any concerns.

2. Pick the Ideal Agile Framework for Your Team: Selecting the perfect Agile framework for your team is essential for success. Consider factors such as project intricacy, team size, and customer engagement requirements when choosing between popular methodologies like Scrum, Kanban, or Extreme Programming (XP).

3. Start Small, Learn, and Scale Up: Instead of diving headfirst into a large-scale Agile transformation, begin with a smaller project to test the waters and gather valuable feedback. Use this experience to fine-tune your approach and scale Agile adoption throughout your organization.

4. Foster a Collaborative and Empowering Environment: Agile project management thrives on teamwork and open communication. Encourage your team members to share ideas, embrace change, and take ownership of their work. Create an environment that nurtures creativity and innovation while supporting continuous learning and growth.

5. Embrace Continuous Improvement and Adaptability: Agile methodologies emphasize progressive development, constant feedback, and ongoing enhancement. Motivate your team to consistently reevaluate their work, make necessary adjustments, and strive for perfection. This dedication to growth will help your projects thrive, even amidst change and uncertainty.

6. Measure and Celebrate Success: Acknowledge and celebrate your team's achievements as they embrace Agile project management. Measure success through key performance indicators (KPIs) like customer satisfaction, time-to-market, and product quality. Recognizing progress will keep your team motivated and committed to the Agile journey.

Tapping into Agile: Unrivaled Advantages

1. Quality-Driven Excellence: Agile's unwavering dedication to product quality ensures each development stage meets the highest standards. With testing in every iteration and continuous learning, excellence is guaranteed.

2. Elevating Team Morale: Agile teams enjoy autonomy and decision-making authority, boosting morale and engagement. The project manager buffers external pressures while cross-functional teams promote skill development.

3. Customer Happiness at Its Core: Agile puts customers front and center, involving them throughout decision-making. The results are customized products that boost satisfaction and loyalty.

4. Enhanced Oversight through Transparency: Agile's open, feedback-driven framework offers advanced reporting and daily updates, keeping stakeholders informed and quality a top priority.

5. Future-Proofing and Predictability: Agile's increased visibility helps teams identify risks, strategize, and smoothly reach project completion. Tools like sprint backlogs and burndown charts enhance predictability and planning.

6. Reducing Risks: Agile's iterative approach minimizes risks with continuous, incremental improvements. Small, manageable sprints preserve valuable progress even when facing challenges.

7. Championing Adaptability: Agile's versatility empowers teams to deftly adapt to change. Segmenting projects into brief sprints enables rapid implementation without excess costs or delays.

8. Journey to Perfection: Agile's pursuit of continuous improvement fosters an open culture of collaboration and idea exchange, inspiring team members to learn and grow together.

Agile Success Stories: Boa Vista, Bosch, & Roche Korea

1. Boa Vista: Pioneering Agile Project Management in the Realm of Financial Solutions - The business landscape has embraced Agile Project Management as a gold standard and for good reason.

This dynamic approach empowers organizations to nimbly respond to evolving customer demands, optimize processes, and ultimately deliver value at lightning speed. Boa Vista, a Brazilian financial solutions provider, stands out as an exemplary case study in the successful implementation of Agile Project Management. It has empowered their teams to optimize their work processes and significantly enhance cross-functional collaboration.

· Embracing the Kanban Method for Agile Success: At the heart of Boa Vista's digital transformation journey lies the Kanban method – a powerful approach that fosters transparency, efficiency, and adaptability. By embedding Kanban into their organizational fabric, Boa Vista has successfully revamped their work methods, aligning strategic objectives with daily operations and nurturing a continuous refinement culture.

· Breaking Down Silos and Enhancing Cross-Functional Collaboration: One of the most notable outcomes of Boa Vista's Agile Project Management efforts has been establishing a more cohesive and collaborative work environment. By utilizing the Kanbanize platform, the company has successfully connected planning and execution across all levels of the organization. This has led to a more streamlined communication process, ensuring smooth information flow and preventing bottlenecks.

· Data-Driven Decision-Making & The Path to Continuous Improvement: Boa Vista's Kanban journey has also paved the way for data-driven decision-making. By leveraging the analytics capabilities of the Kanbanize platform, the company can closely monitor team performance and identify areas that need attention. This data-driven approach to continuous improvement has enabled Boa Vista to make informed decisions and fostered a culture of innovation, ensuring long-term success in an ever-evolving business landscape.

· Transforming the Financial Solutions Industry: The success of Boa Vista's digital transformation journey showcases the immense potential of Agile Project Management in the financial solutions space. By embracing the Kanban method and cultivating a culture of continuous improvement, Boa Vista has become a beacon of inspiration for businesses looking to thrive in today's competitive environment.

"We were looking for leaner, evolutionary and adaptive processes. That is why we chose Kanban over any other method. - Luan Oliveira, Head of Software Engineering and Development at Boa Vista. Read more about Boa Vista's Kanban-Empowered Digital Transformation here.

2. Bosch's Agile Project Management Revolution: Driving Innovation at an Unprecedented Scale

Regarding Agile Project Management, few companies have demonstrated its potential as profoundly as Bosch, the automotive giant with a rich 130+ year history. With 390,000 employees across 60 countries, Bosch's transformation into an agile, market-responsive powerhouse is a testament to Agile Project Management's effectiveness when applied at scale.

· The Key to Bosch's Sustained Success: Bosch's journey to embrace Agile Project Management commenced with CEO Volkmar Denner's epiphany that genuine business agility was essential to stay abreast of the ever-evolving market demands. The company initially experimented with a 'dual organization' model, where only certain groups within the organization would become agile. However, it soon became apparent that this approach wouldn't deliver the desired results.

· The Decision to Go All In: Recognizing the need for a more comprehensive change, Bosch implemented Agile Project Management across the entire organization, including the leadership team. This shift was a game-changer, allowing the company to break down silos, foster cross-functional collaboration, and create a more responsive and adaptable organization.

· Bosch's Agile Leap in Decision-Making: One of the most remarkable shifts at Bosch was the transition towards continuous planning and funding cycles. This enabled the company to adapt and respond to market conditions more effectively. Bosch's Agile principles have led to heightened efficiency and innovation across the organization by focusing on simplicity and prompt decision-making.

· Bosch's Agile Project Management Success Stories: Bosch's commitment to Agile Project Management has yielded impressive results in various business sectors. In their automotive group, development time was slashed in half, earning them Tesla's 'Excellent Development Partner Award.' Their home and garden division witnessed a surge in innovation, efficiency, and employee engagement through the formation of cross-functional teams. Moreover, their agricultural sector saw an impressive acceleration in innovation rates, rolling out ten new systems in a mere four weeks.

· Learning from Bosch's Success: Bosch's remarkable transformation into an Agile powerhouse inspires businesses of all sizes. By adopting Agile Project Management, organizations can cultivate a climate of ingenuity, adaptability, and agility, setting themselves up for enduring success in today's cutthroat market.Read more about Bosch: Embracing Agility here.

3. Roche Korea's Agile Project Management Journey: Maximizing Innovation in Patient-Centric Healthcare

In the healthcare industry, Roche Korea stands out as one of the most successful implementations of Agile Project Management. As the Korean subsidiary of the Swiss multinational healthcare giant, Roche Korea embarked on an Agile transformation journey to augment patient access to cutting-edge medicines and fuel business expansion. The outcome? A 30% sales boost and an increased number of patients reaping the benefits of their medicines and services.

· The Power of Agile Transformation in Healthcare: Roche Korea initiated an Agile transformation journey to bolster the efficiency, adaptability, and patient-centered focus of their organization and business operations. By giving individual employees and small teams the power to make their own decisions, Roche Korea streamlined decision-making processes and promptly responded to clients' needs.

· Revolutionizing Patient Care with Agile Project Management: The Agile transformation led Roche Korea's evolution into an organization focused on forming teams based on treatments or patient groups, identifying patient needs, and making optimal decisions. This patient-centric approach has enabled Roche Korea to learn about new areas, such as Alzheimer's and ophthalmic diseases, and rapidly develop effective business strategies.

· Fostering Synergy with the "One Roche" Approach: Implementing the "One Roche" strategy, Roche Korea collaborated with Roche Diagnostics Korea to deliver tailored treatments for individual patients. By collaborating in areas of overlap, the two divisions forged a powerful synergy, paving the way for a more efficient and sustainable healthcare system in Korea.

· Roche Korea's Winning Formula: Roche Korea's unwavering commitment to Agile Project Management has led to remarkable achievements for the company. Roche Korea's Agile transformation has genuinely touched patients' lives by instituting a system in leading Korean hospitals to offer personalized healthcare based on molecular tumor board (MTB) results.

· The Future of Healthcare: Roche Korea's remarkable success in Agile transformation inspires businesses in the healthcare industry. By adopting Agile Project Management principles, organizations can create a patient-centered approach that fosters innovation and adaptability, positioning themselves for long-term success in an ever-changing healthcare landscape.Discover more about how Roche Korea raises sales by 30% through 'agile transformation' here.

Master Agile Project Management and Stay Ahead of the Game

Agile project management is the key to unlocking the future of project success. It paves the way for your team to achieve remarkable efficiency, speed, and quality levels. By embracing the core principles of Agile methodologies, you can tailor your approach to perfectly match your team's distinct needs and propel your project achievements to new heights.

Immerse yourself in Agile project management's transformative potential and witness its tremendous influence on your team, your projects, and your entire organization. Blaze a trail in the Agile revolution and outshine the competition in our rapidly shifting world.

Agile's impeccable blend of adaptability, transparency, and unwavering dedication to quality has revolutionized project management. By emphasizing customer satisfaction and continuous improvement, Agile equips teams to confront challenges head-on, deliver exceptional products, and nurture lasting success. Our all-inclusive guide to Agile instruments and methodologies serves as your North Star to chart a course through the exhilarating realm of this groundbreaking approach.

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Agile Unleashed at Scale

How john deere’s global it group implemented a holistic transformation powered by scrum@scale, scrum, devops, and a modernized technology stack, agile unleashed at scale: results at a glance, executive summary.

In 2019 John Deere’s Global IT group launched an Agile transformation with the simple but ambitious goal of improving speed to outcomes.

As with most Fortune 100 companies, Agile methodologies and practices were not new to John Deere’s Global IT group, but senior leadership wasn’t seeing the results they desired. “We had used other scaled frameworks in the past—which are perfectly strong Agile processes,” explains Josh Edgin,  Transformation Lead at John Deere, “But with PSI planning and two-month release cycles, I think you can get comfortable transforming into a mini-waterfall.” Edgin adds, “We needed to evolve.”

Senior leadership decided to launch a holistic transformation that would touch every aspect of the group’s work – from application development to core infrastructure; from customer and dealer-facing products to operations-oriented design, manufacturing and supply chain, and internal/back-end finance and human resource products.

Picking the right Agile framework is one of the most important decisions an organization can make. This is especially true when effective scaling is a core component of the overall strategy. “Leadership found the Scrum@Scale methodology to be the right fit to scale across IT and the rest of the business,” states Ganesh Jayaram, John Deere’s Vice President of Global IT. Therefore, the Scrum and Scrum@Scale frameworks, entwined with DevOps and technical upskilling became the core components of the group’s new Agile Operating Model (AOM).

Picking the right Agile consulting, training, and coaching support can be just as important as the choice of framework. Scrum Inc. is known for its expertise, deep experience, and long track record of success in both training and large and complex transformations. Additionally, Scrum Inc. offered industry-leading on-demand courses to accelerate the implementation, and a proven path to create self-sustaining Agile organizations able to successfully run their own Agile journey.

“I remember standing in front of our CEO and the Board of Directors to make this pitch,” says Jayaram, “because it was the single largest investment Global IT has made in terms of capital and expense.” But the payoff, he adds, would be significant. “We bet the farm so to speak. We promised we would do more, do it faster, and do it cheaper.”

John Deere’s CEO gave the transformation a green light.

Just two years into the effort it is a bet that has paid off.

Metrics and Results

Enterprise-level results include:

• Return on Investment: John Deere estimates its ROI from the Global IT group’s transformation to be greater than 100 percent .
• Output: Has increased by 165 percent , exceeding the initial goal of 125 percent.
• Time to Market: Has been reduced by 63 percent — leadership initially sought a 40 percent reduction.
• Engineering Ratio: When looking at the complete organizational structure of Scrum Masters, Product Owners, Agile Coaches, Engineering Managers, UX Professionals, and team members, leadership set a target of 75% with “fingers on keyboards” delivering value through engineering. This ratio now stands at 77.7 percent .
• Cost Efficiency: Leadership wanted to reduce the labor costs of the group by 20 percent . They have achieved this goal through insourcing and strategic hiring–even with the addition of Scrum and Agile roles.
• Employee NPS (eNPS): Employee Net Promoter Score, or eNPS, is a reflection of team health. The Global IT group began with a 42-point baseline. A score above 50 is considered excellent. The group now has a score of 65 , greater than the 20-point improvement targeted by leadership.

John Deere’s Global IT group has seen function/team level improvements that far exceed these results. Order Management, the pilot project for this implementation has seen team results which include:

• The number of Functions/Features Delivered per Sprint has increased by more than 10X
• The number of Deploys has improved by more than 15X

As Jayaram notes, “When you look at some of the metrics and you see a 1,000 percent improvement you can’t help but think they got the baseline wrong.”

But the baselines are right. The improvement is real.

John Deere’s Global IT group has also seen exponential results thanks to the implementation of the AOM. “We’ve delivered an order of magnitude more value and bottom-line impact to John Deere in the ERP space than in any previous year,” states Edgin. These results include:

• Time to Market: Reduced by 87 percent
• Deploys: Increased by 400 percent
• Features/Functions Delivered per Sprint: Has nearly tripled

Edgin adds that “every quality measure has improved measurably. We’re delivering things at speeds previously not thought possible. And we’re doing it with fewer people.”

Training at Scale and Creating a Self-Sufficient Agile Organization

The Wave/Phase approach has ensured both effective and efficient training across John Deere’s Global IT group. As of December 2021, roughly 24-months after its inception:

• 295 teams have successfully completed a full wave of training
• Approximately 2,500 individuals have successfully completed their training
• 50 teams were actively in wave training
• Approximately 150 teams were actively preparing to enter a wave

John Deere’s Global IT group is well on its way to becoming a self-sustaining Agile organization thanks to its work with Scrum Inc.

• Internal training capacity increased by 64 percent over a two-year span
• The number of classes led by internal trainers doubled (from 25 to 50) between 2020 and 2021

Click on the Section Titles Below to Read this I n-Depth  Case Study

1. introduction: the complex challenge to overcome.

This need can be unlocking innovation, overcoming a complex challenge, more efficient and effective prioritization, removing roadblocks, or the desire to delight customers through innovation and value delivery.

Ganesh Jayaram is John Deere’s Vice President of Global IT. He summarizes the overarching need behind this Agile transformation down to a simple but powerful four-word vision; improve speed to outcomes.

Note this is not going fast just for the sake of going fast – that can be a recipe for unhappy customers and decreased quality. Very much the opposite of Agile.

Dissect Jayaram’s vision, and you’ll find elements at the heart of Agile itself; rapid iteration, innovation, quality, value delivery, and most importantly, delighted customers. Had John Deere lost sight of these elements? Absolutely not.

As Jayaram explains, “we intended to significantly improve on delivering these outcomes.” To do this, Jayaram and his leadership team decomposed their vision of ‘improve speed to outcomes’ into three enterprise-level goals:

• Speed to Understanding: How would they know they are truly sensitive to what their customers – both internal and external – care about, want, and need?
• Speed to Decision Making: Decrease decision latency to improve the ability to capitalize on opportunities, respond to market changes, or pivot based on rapid feedback.
• Speed to Execution: Decrease time to market while maintaining or improving quality and value delivery.

Deere’s Global IT leadership knew achieving their vision and these goals would take more than incremental adjustments. Beneficial change at this level requires a holistic transformation that spans the IT group as well as the business partners.

They needed the right Agile transformation support, the ability to efficiently and effectively scale both training and operations and to build the in-house expertise to make the group’s Agile journey a self-sustaining one. As Josh Edgin, Global IT Transformation Lead at John Deere states, “We needed to evolve.”

2. Background: The Transformation's Ambitious Goals

Before this transformation, John Deere’s Global IT function operated like that of many large organizations. In broad terms, this meant that:

• The department had isolated pockets of Agile teams that implemented several different Agile frameworks in an ad hoc way
• Teams were often assigned to projects which were funded for a fixed period of time
• The exact work to be done on projects was dictated by extensive business analysis and similar plans
• Outsourcing of projects or components to third-party suppliers was commonplace
• The manager role was largely comprised of primarily directing and prioritizing work for their teams

At John Deere, process maturity was very high. Practices such as these were created in the Second Industrial Revolution and they can deliver value, especially if you have a defined, repeatable process. However, if you have a product or service that needs to evolve to meet changing market demands, these legacy leadership practices can quickly become liabilities.

• Pockets of Agile can deliver better results. But isolated Agile teams will inherently be dependent on non-Agile teams to deliver value. This limits the effectiveness and productivity gains of Agile teams specifically and the organization as a whole. The ad hoc use of different Agile frameworks, as Vice President Jayaram explains, compounds this problem by “not being something we could replicate and scale across the organization.”
• Project-oriented teams are often incentivized to deliver only what the project plan calls for – this inhibits a customer-centric mindset and the incorporation of feedback.
• Expecting teams to always stick to a predetermined plan limits their ability to innovate, creatively problem solve, or pivot to respond to changing requirements or market conditions.
• Outsourcing can create flexibility for organizations, but an over-reliance on outsourcing can slow speed to market and value delivery.
• Too many handoffs deliver little if any value. These can also significantly slow progress on any project or product which increases time to market.
• IT managers that are primarily delegators can become a form of overhead since they’re not actively producing value for customers. Their other skills can atrophy leaving them ill-equipped to help develop their team members, and overall team member engagement and talent retention can suffer.

2.1 The Transformation Goal

Improving speed to outcomes required greater employee engagement, decreased time to market, higher productivity, better prioritization, and alignment, and increase the engineering  ratio – the percentage of the organization with what Jayaram and Edgin call “fingers on keyboards” who create the products customers used.

Additionally, leadership wanted to increase the group’s in-house technical expertise, modernize its technology stack, unify around a single Agile framework that easily and efficiently scaled both across IT and the rest of the business, and reorganize its products and portfolios around Agile value streams. All while meeting or exceeding current quality standards.

Leadership wanted to go big. They wanted nothing less than a holistic Agile transformation that would improve every aspect of their business and all of the group’s 500 teams.

Next, senior leadership created the group-wide metrics they would use to measure success. These included:

• Output: Increase by 125 percent
• Time to Market: Reduce by 40 percent
• Engineering Ratio: Improve to 75 percent with “fingers on keyboards”
• Employee NPS (eNPS): 20-point improvement
• Cost Efficiency: They would reduce labor costs by 20 percent

At the time, these goals seemed ambitious to say the least. “I remember standing in front of our CEO and the Board of Directors to make this pitch,” says Jayaram, “because it was the single largest investment Global IT has made in terms of capital and expense.” But the payoff, he adds, would be significant. “We bet the farm so to speak. We promised we would do more, do it faster, and do it cheaper.”

John Deere’s CEO gave the transformation, called the Agile Operating Model (AOM), a green light.

3. Agile Operating Model: Why John Deere Chose Scrum And Scrum@Scale

Picking the right Agile framework is one of the most important decisions an organization can make. This is especially true when effective scaling is a core component of the overall strategy.

As Edgin explains, Agile was not new to John Deere’s Global IT group. “We had Agile practices. We had Agile teams. We were delivering value.”

But says Edgin, they weren’t satisfied with the results. So, a team began evaluating several different Agile methodologies. They examined what had been done at John Deere in the past and anticipated what the group’s future needs would be.

In the past, Edgin states, “We had used other scaled frameworks—which are perfectly strong Agile processes. But with PSI planning and two-month release cycles, I think you can get comfortable transforming into a mini-waterfall,” he says, “So we aligned on Scrum being the best fit for our culture and what we wanted to accomplish.”

Early on, leadership decided to implement a tight partnership where the IT delivery team(s) are closely coupled with the product organization that is the voice of the customer. When connecting multiple products together, “leadership found the Scrum@Scale methodology to be the best fit to scale across IT and the rest of the business,” says Jayaram.

The Scrum and Scrum@Scale frameworks, entwined with DevOps and technical upskilling, became integral Agile components of the group’s new AOM.

4. The Foundry: More Than A Training Facility

When it came time to name the final and arguably most important component of the AOM, the Foundry was a clear choice. It recognizes the company’s proud heritage while also symbolizing the change that would drive the Global IT group into the future.

Many organizations incorporate a “learning dojo model” when implementing an Agile transformation. These dojos and their teams are often home to Agile practices, conduct training sessions, and provide immersive coaching for newly launched Agile teams.

Training is, of course, a critical piece of any transformation. As is coaching. After all, switching from a traditional command and control approach to an Agile servant leader approach is a significant, sometimes disorienting change.

However, some corporate dojos work on what could be considered a “catch and release” strategy. They provide one or two weeks of baseline Agile training to individuals and teams, then say “get to it”. Coaching is limited and provided primarily by outside consultants.

The first problem with “catch and release” dojos is the cookie-cutter-like approach. A mass “baseline only” training strategy focus on volume — not understanding and usability.

The second problem is the over-reliance on outside consultants for team and organizational coaching. The cost-prohibited nature of outside consultants can limit the levels of coaching each team receives. This approach also equates to an organization outsourcing its Agile knowledge base and thought leadership — a critical competency in modern business.

The John Deere Foundry and Deere’s approach to embedding Agile Coaches and Scrum Masters across the organization represents the evolution of the dojo model by addressing these problems head-on.

4.1 A Relationship Built on Creating a Self-Sustaining Agile Organization

From the beginning, John Deere’s relationship with Scrum Inc. was built around creating a self-sustaining Agile organization. One where the Foundry’s own internal trainers and coaches would build all the capabilities they needed to ensure the Global IT group’s Agile transformation was a self-sustaining one.

This included not just materials needed to train new Agile teams. This relationship included sharing all the knowledge, skills, expertise, content, and tactics critical to training the coaches and trainers themselves.

The Foundry was launched by a dedicated team comprised of both John Deere’s internal trainers and coaches and their Scrum Inc. counterparts. They worked from a single backlog which prioritized knowledge sharing along with the “hands-on” work of training John Deere’s Global IT teams in Scrum.

Scrum Inc.’s consultants took leading roles during the first wave of training, while their John Deere counterparts observed and learned the content and techniques. By the third wave, John Deere’s internal trainers and coaches were taking the lead, with Scrum Inc.’s consultants there to advise and refine the program.

As time passed, a significant number of trainers and coaches inside the Foundry and across the organization showed the level of mastery needed to successfully pass Scrum Inc.’s intensive Registered Scrum Trainer and Registered Agile Coach courses. They could now credential their own students. More importantly, they demonstrated the ability to drive the Global IT group’s Agile transformation forward on their own.

This approach removes any reliance on outside contractors for key competencies.

4.2 Unified, Context-Specific Training

Implementing an Agile transformation is a complex challenge. Research continues to show that ineffective or insufficient levels of training and coaching are leading causes of failed implementations. So too are misalignment, misunderstandings, or outright misuse of the concepts and terminology important to any Agile framework.

In short, everyone needs to share a unified understanding of the new way of working for it to have any chance of working at all.

The best way to overcome the problem of a cookie-cutter approach is to ensure all training content is as context-specific as possible.

Here too the connection between the Foundry and Scrum Inc. was important.

The joint team of John Deere and Scrum Inc. staff swarmed to create Agile courses packed with customized, context-specific material that would resonate with the company’s Global IT group.

This content removed any feeling of a cookie-cutter approach and increased the usability of each lesson.

4.3 Results 

• Internal training capacity increased  by 64 percent over a two-year span
• John Deere trainers are now leading customized, context-specific courses including Scrum Master , Product Owner , Engineering Manager , Agile for Leaders , Scrum@Scale Practitioner , and Scrum@Scale Foundations

Perhaps the best measure of success is the waiting list of teams wanting to go through Agile training and coaching. Initially, hesitancy over implementing the Agile Operating Model and undergoing training was high. Initially, there wasn’t a high demand for the training, however as early adopters experienced success, demand for the training grew. Soon teams were actively seeking admission to the next planned cohort. Now, even with greatly expanded capacity, there is a waiting list.

The Foundry model has been so successful that John Deere’s Global IT group has expanded its footprint to include coaching in Mexico, Germany, and Brazil and launched a full-scale Foundry program at the company’s facility in India. In addition to the Foundry, embedded Agile coaches continuing to drive transformation locally are a key component to the model’s success.

5. How To Achieve Efficient and Effective Training at Scale

Enter the Wave/Phase training approach implemented by the Foundry with Scrum Inc.

In this model, each team includes IT engineers along with their Scrum Masters and business-focused Product Owners. A training cohort, usually comprised of 40 to 50 teams, constitutes a wave.

The waves themselves are comprised of three distinct phases:

• The Pre-Phase: Where teams and locally embedded agile coaches prepare for an immersive wave coaching experience
• The Preparation Phase: Focuses on product organization and customer journeys
• The Immersion Phase: Team launch, coaching, and full immersion into the AOM

All three phases are designed to run concurrently, which keeps the pipeline full, flowing, and ensures efficient training at scale. The transformation doesn’t end with the wave experience. Continuous improvement and ongoing transformation continue well beyond the Immersion Phase, led by embedded agile leaders in partnership with The Foundry.

The quality and context-specific nature of the training itself, along with the “left-seat-right-seat” nature of the coaching, ensures the learning is effective.

5.1 The Pre-Phase

Embedded Agile coaches are continuously transforming teams in their organizations even before they enter a wave. One goal of the Pre-Phase is to ensure readiness of teams looking to enter a wave. Acceptance criteria include:

• Proper organization design review to ensure teams are set up to succeed with the correct roles
• A draft plan for their product structure (explained in more detail in section 6 of this case study)
• The Scrum Roles of Product Owner, Engineering Manager, and Scrum Master are filled

Ryan Trotter is a principal Agile coach with more than 25 years of experience in various capacities at John Deere. Trotter says experience shows that not meeting one or more criteria “causes deeper conversations and could result in some mitigations or delaying until they’re ready.”

5.2 The Preparation Phase

The benefits of an Agile mindset and processes can be significantly limited by legacy structures.

Therefore, product organization is the primary focus of the preparation phase.

“We want to create a much stronger connection between the customer, and the Product Owner and team” explains Heidi Bernhardt who has been a senior leader of the Agile Operating Model since its inception. Bernhardt has been with John Deere for more than two decades now. She says individuals in the product and portfolio side of the house learn to “think in a different way.”

Participants in the preparation phase learn how to create customer journey maps and conduct real-world customer interviews to ensure their feedback loops are both informative and rapid — key drivers of success for any Scrum team and organization explains Bernhardt, “They’re talking with the customer every Sprint, asking what their needs are and what they anticipate in the future.”

They also learn how to manage and prioritize backlogs and how to do long-term planning in an Agile way.

Scrum Role training is a critical component of the preparation phase. Product Owners and Scrum Masters attend both Registered Scrum Master and Registered Product Owner courses.

Team members and others who interact regularly with the team take Scrum Startup for Teams , a digital, on-demand learning course offered by Scrum Inc. “Scrum Startup for Teams provides a really good base level of understanding,” says Ryan Trotter, “People can take it at their own pace and they can go back and review it whenever they want. It really hit a sweet spot for our software engineers.”

By the end of 2021 Scrum Startup for Teams had helped train roughly 2,500 people in the Global IT group and nearly the same number of individuals throughout the rest of John Deere — including those who aren’t on Scrum Teams but who work closely with them.

5.3 The Immersion Phase

The 10-week long immersion phase is where the Agile mindset and the AOM take flight. Where the Scrum and Scrum@Scale frameworks are fully implemented and the teams turn the concepts they’ve learned in the prior phases into their new way of working.

For John Deere’s Global IT group, immersion is not a theoretical exercise. It is not downtime. It is on-the-job training in a new way of working that meets each team at their current maturity level.

The first week of immersion is the only time teams aren’t dedicated to their usual duties.

During this time, says Trotter, coaches and trainers are reinforcing concepts, answering questions, and the teams are working through a team canvas. “This is where the team members identify their purpose, their product, and agree on how they’ll work together.”

Teams are fully focused on delivering value and their real-world product over the next nine weeks.

The Product Owner sets the team’s priorities, refines the backlog, and shares the customer feedback they’ve gathered. The Scrum Master helps the team continuously improve and remove or make impediments visible. Scrum Masters collaborates with an embedded Agile Coach that continues to champion transformation. Team members are delivering value. John Deere’s technical coach for the team is the Engineering Manager, a role that has transformed from the original team leader.

Those in the immersion phase receive intensive coaching, but they are also empowered to innovate or creatively problem solve on their own. The goal is for the coaches to help make agility and learning through experimentation a part of each team’s DNA.

The transition from students to practitioners becomes more apparent towards the end of immersion. Coaches take more of a back seat in the process explains Trotter. “We don’t want to create a false dependency. We want the teams to take ownership of their own Agile journey, to know the Foundry is here when needed but to be confident that they’ve got this and can run with it so they can continuously improve on their own.”

5.4 Measuring Wave Training Effectiveness

Measuring the effectiveness of any large-scale Agile training program requires more than just counting the number of completed courses or credentials received. The instructors and coaches must be able to see the Agile mindset has also taken hold and the implementation is making a positive impact on the organization. They also need the ability to see where problems are arising so they can provide additional coaching, training, and other resources where needed.

John Deere’s internal coaches created their Ten Immersion Principles (TIPS) as a way of measuring team health once they leave the immersion phase. Foundry coaches and trainers can then focus their efforts to create a continuous learning backlog that the team owns.

The TIPS are:

• Value Flows Through the System Super Fast: The team can deliver new products or features to customers very quickly. Any impediments or dependencies hindering delivery are quickly identified and addressed
• Amplify Feedback Loops: Rapid feedback from customers is a reality
• Continuous Learning Organization: The team is taking ownership of their learning paths and Agile journey
• Deliver Value in Small Increments: The team delivers value to customers in small pieces in order to gather feedback, test hypotheses, and pivot if needed
• Customer Centricity: The team is focused on those actually using the product and not just the stakeholders interested in the value the product should deliver
• Continuous Improvement: The team is always looking for ways to improve product and process
• Big and Visible: The team make progress, impediments, and all needed information transparent and easy to find
• Team is Predictable: The team tracks productivity metrics and estimates backlog items so that the anticipated date of delivery for products or features can be known
• Data-Driven Decisions: Feedback and real data, not the loudest voice or squeaky wheel — is used to make decisions
• Culture of Experimentation: The team is willing to take calculated risks and are able to learn from failure

5.5 Results

The positive business impact this training has had is outlined in section 8. Metrics and Results of this case study.

6. Agile Product and Portfolio Management: Why It's Important And How To Do It

Erin Wyffels keeps an old whiteboard in her office as a reminder of the moment she and her team solved a particularly complex problem.

Wyffels leads the product excellence area of the Foundry, supporting John Deere’s product leaders in product ownership and the dynamic portfolio process. She has a long history with traditional project management, inside and outside of IT. Over the past two years, she has grown her expertise in Agile product and portfolio management.

John Deere’s Global IT group manages a catalog of more than 400 digital products across 500 teams. These support every business capability in the broader company — from finance and marketing to manufacturing and infrastructure and operations.

Most large organizations are built on legacy systems. Left unchanged, these systems can limit the effectiveness of an Agile transformation. Wyffels says the prior structure of projects and portfolios within John Deere’s Global IT group was just such a system. “Our old taxonomy would in no way work with Agile.” So, she was picked to help change it for the better.

6.1 Why the Product and Portfolio Structure Needed to Change 

Before implementing the AOM, portfolio management was an annual affair. One that Wyffels says, “left everyone unhappy.”

Stakeholders and senior leadership would come with a list of desired projects. Financial analysts, IT department managers, and portfolio managers would then hash out funding for these projects. Teams would then be assigned to the resourced projects. All pretty standard stuff in the corporate world.

There are, however, several problems with this approach.

Take the focus on projects. Traditional project management is a very effective approach for defined processes. By definition, a project has a start date and an end date. A set amount of work is to be done at a predetermined cost.

The weakness in traditional project management becomes apparent when you have a product or service that will evolve and emerge over time. There are just too many unknowns for the traditional approach to work effectively.

Then there’s the time it takes to make decisions based on customer feedback. As Wyffels points out, the annual nature of the pre-AOM process meant, “The best information and data you could get would be a quarter old.” Agility requires far more rapid feedback loops.

Throw in a taxonomy built more around project type than the value delivered and employees who were moved to projects instead of allowed to own a product end-to-end, and John Deere’s Global IT group had a system that was optimized based on constraints but didn’t support where the company was headed next. They were ready for a system that promoted total product ownership including value, investment, and quality and move to the next level of product maturity.

6.2 Customer Perspective and Value Streams

The need to adopt Agile product and portfolio management processes became apparent early in the AOM’s implementation.

Amy Willard is a Group Engineering Manager currently leading the AOM Foundry. She says this also becomes apparent for individual teams taking part in the immersion phase of wave training. “We see changes in their product structure evolving. They have that aha moment and realize the structure we had before wasn’t quite right.”

The new, Agile structure focuses on three critical components — customer perspective, value streams, and a product mindset.

• Customer Perspective: Willard says the value delivered to customer personas is now used to more logically group products and product families. This Agile taxonomy helps to reduce time to market and boost innovation by fostering greater coordination and collaboration between teams.
• Value Streams: Dependencies, handoffs, and removing bottlenecks are also considered when creating product groups and portfolios. Willard notes, “We’ve had a lot of success with developing value stream maps across products,” also from a customer journey perspective.
• Product Mindset: Projects are defined by their scope, cost, and duration. Products are different, they evolve based on market feedback to continually deliver value to customers.  The difference may sound small, but Willard says it represents a “major shift” in mindset for the Global IT group.

The group has developed a curriculum for people in product roles in each transformation wave, with coaching support available to each person. The same content has been made available for all roles through a self-learning option, which is great for non-product roles or people that take a new position after their group’s wave is complete. Additionally, the communities being established for product roles and collaboration across people in the roles are the final building blocks to continued maturity after the transformation waves are done.

6.3 Highlighted Result: Better Value-Based Investments

The implementation of Agile product and portfolio management has yielded numerous positive results for John Deere’s Global IT group. These structural changes were critical drivers of the success noted in the Metrics and Results section of this case study.

This shift has also increased the ability of the group’s senior leadership to act like venture capitalists and invest resources into areas and products with the most potential value to both the organization and customers.

All products are now segmented into one of three categories based on actual value delivery and market feedback. These categories are:

• Grow: High-value products or opportunities worth a higher level of investment
• Sustain: Products we want to continue investing in, but not to differentiate
• Monitor: The capability is required to run a successful business, but the investment level may be reduced

There are some products that may have problems that need to be addressed immediately, or the investment levels are decreasing in certain areas of the product due to rationalization efforts.  Those products are flagged with Fix or Exit so the MetaScrum can have prioritization conversations more easily.

The heightened levels of business intelligence and customer feedback the AOM has fostered allow leadership to make better decisions about investments faster. It also reduces the cost of pivoting when market conditions change.

Strong products, as well as prioritization and alignment at every level of the organization are what will make the portfolio process most effective at John Deere.

7. Agile Culture Unleashed

In-depth:  .

John Deere has a long history of finding innovative solutions to common problems. Today, they’re still focused on driving customer efficiency, productivity, and value in sustainable ways.

As the company states , “We run so life can leap forward.”

That alone is enough to make the company iconic. For John Deere, that’s just the start.

People matter at John Deere. So too do concepts like purpose, autonomy, and mastery made famous by author Daniel Pink in his book Drive . “It’s no secret that there is a war for talent right now,” acknowledges Global IT Transformation Lead Josh Edgin, “and the market is only getting more competitive.” John Deere’s Global IT group is not immune to that competition. However, it has an advantage over other organizations — a thriving Agile culture.

Psychological safety, empowerment, risk-taking, are the foundations of the AOM.  At John Deere’s Global IT group,being Agile isn’t defined by holding Scrum events, it’s about implementing Scrum the way it was intended by Scrum co-creator Jeff Sutherland.

Work-life balance is important. The environment is one of collaboration and respect. The group also has a common sense based remote work policy and a number of hubs for when collocation is imperative.

All this doesn’t mean everything is perfect at John Deere’s Global IT group. Leadership is the first to tell you they can and will do even better. This itself is a powerful statement — this is a place where continuous improvement is everyone’s goal, not something management demands of delivery teams.

“We’re a company that is walking the talk,” says Global IT Vice President Ganesh Jayaram, “We’re making investments both in terms of our team members and technology.” Here are just three of the important ways John Deere’s Global IT group is indeed “walking the talk.”

7.1 Transformation Portal 

Big and visible. That is the goal of the group’s transformation portal. Everything relating to the AOM implementation can be found here.

Resources, wave schedules, thought leadership, and shared learnings are all available in this in-depth dashboard. Far more than you often see in other organizations. So too are metrics for individual teams and the group as a whole.

“People want purpose,” says Edgin, “they want to solve hard problems. They want to know the work they do matters.”  This portal allows individuals to better understand their roles and they work together.

7.2 Agile Career Paths

Log into John Deere’s AOM transformation portal and you’ll find a section with dedicated self-learning and career advancement paths. As Amy Willard explains, “We have a path for every persona and community led CoPs, supported by the Foundry.” This includes everything from User Experience Practitioner to Scrum Master and Product Owner.

Having clearly defined career paths and self-learning opportunities is an important step. It not only empowers continuous improvement, but it also shows professional agilists that they’re valued, their skills are important, and they have a bright future at the organization which does not dictate they must choose between agility and career advancement.

7.3 Prioritizing Team and Organizational eNPS Scores

Through the AOM John Deere was focused on creating a great place to work. Leadership believed that healthy teams would drive creativity, productivity, and sustainability.

John Deere’s Global IT group regularly measures this through both team and organizational Employee Net Promoter Scores, or eNPS. By asking employees if they would recommend their team to others, leaders can gain a better understanding of the health and engagement of the team.

Edgin explains the importance of these metrics this way, “When you create a culture where you have awesome employees with the right mindset and great technical skills you want them to stay here because this is where they want to be.”

The Global IT group began with a 42-point baseline. A score above 50 is considered excellent. The group now has a score of 65, greater than the 20-point improvement targeted by leadership.

Individual teams show similar results across the board.

8. Metrics and Results

Truly successful Agile transformations don’t have a finish line. That’s why they call it a journey of continuous improvement.

Still, just two years into this implementation, John Deere’s Global IT group is clearly well down that path. The results are as indisputable as they are impressive.

“When you look at a product area and you see a 1,000 percent improvement can’t help but think they got the baseline wrong,” says Global IT Vice President Ganesh Jayaram.

But, digging deeper, the improvement is real.

Take the productivity gains seen from the teams with Order Management. Jayaram says these teams were chosen for the AOM’s pilot project because it was “the most complicated, had the most dependencies, and had tentacles throughout the organization.” He believed that if Scrum, Scrum@Scale, and the AOM worked for Order Management, other teams couldn’t question if it would work for them.

Metrics show just how successful the pilot was.

Both results are exponentially greater than the 125 percent increase target set for the transformation. While the Order Management results are leading the way, results from other business capability areas inside the Global IT group are closely following.

Take the ERP-heavy environment of Manufacturing Operations. Here, Edgin notes, thanks to the Agile transformation and the modernization of the technology stack, “this year we’ve delivered an order of magnitude more value and bottom-line impact to John Deere in the ERP space than in any previous year.”

He adds that “Every quality measure has improved. We’re delivering things at speeds previously not thought possible. And we’re doing it with fewer people.” Other Manufacturing Operations results include:

• Deploys: increased by 400 percent
• Features/Functions Delivered per Sprint:  Has nearly tripled

8.1 Global IT Group Overall Results

Across the board, Deere’s Global IT Agile transformation has met or exceeded every initial goal set by senior leadership. Even when you combine results from both more mature teams and those that have just left the Foundry.

The targets that leadership set were to be reached within six months after completing immersion, but John Deere is seeing continued progress led by the business capability areas to achieve even higher results with the ongoing guidance of embedded change leaders such as Scrum Masters and business capability Agile coaches.

• Time to Market: Has been reduced by 63 percent — leadership initially sought a 40 percent reduction.
• Cost Efficiency: Leadership wanted to reduce the labor costs of the group by 20 percent . They have achieved this goal through insourcing and strategic hiring–even with the addition of Scrum and Agile roles.

8.2 Return on Investment and Impact on the Bottom Line

Agile transformations are an investment, in people, culture, productivity, innovation, and value delivery. Like any investment, transformations must deliver a positive return to be judged a success.

Deere’s ROI on the Global IT group’s transformation is estimated to be greater than 100 percent.

Successful Agile transformations also make a material impact on their company’s bottom line. Financially, 2021 was a banner year for John Deere. The company generated nearly $6 billion in annual net income — far more than its previous record.  So, it takes a lot to materially impact the company’s bottom line.

Both Global IT Transformation Lead Josh Edgin and Global IT Vice President Ganesh Jayaram believe the AOM has indeed helped move the financial needle at Deere.

“The metrics we track show very clearly the answer is yes,” says Jayaram.

Edgin states, “We’re helping the company achieve our smart industrial aspirations by improving how we serve our customers and boosting productivity.” He adds that the AOM allows the group to “innovate and deliver high quality, secure solutions at a much faster pace to meet and exceed our customer needs.”

9. Agile in Action: Supply Chain Solutions Amid Disruptions

A global leader with more than 25 brands,  John Deere  relies on a complex supply chain and efficient logistics to ensure production and delivery go as planned.

More than 10,000 parts are needed to assemble just one of John Deere’s  award-winning X9 combines  — twice the number of components needed to build a new car.

Modern combines, just like modern farming, also require far more technology than you likely think.

Sensors, antennas, and motherboards are now just as critical as tires, treads, and tines. Of course, John Deere makes far more than combines. Its iconic logo appears on everything from tillers and tractors to marine engines, motor graders, and the John Deere Gator utility vehicle. In all, the company manufactures more than 100 distinct lines of equipment.

Each product relies on efficient and effective supply chain management — from procurement and sourcing to cost control, shipping, customs, and final delivery.

Overall, John Deere depends on a complex network of thousands of suppliers from around the globe to build industry-leading John Deere products.

Coordinating and collaborating with that network through digital solutions largely falls to the company’s Supply Chain Solutions teams and Karen Powers, the Digital Product Manager for Supply Chain Management and Worldwide Logistics at John Deere.

“We have responsibility for every shipment around the world,” she explains, “ from any supplier to any factory, to any component operation in between, and for the end shipment of the completed good to the dealer.” To accomplish all of this, Powers’ team also works with aspects of the company’s global trade including imports, exports, customs, documentation, and duties.

It’s a mammoth undertaking even in the best of times. And 2020 and 2021 were hardly the best of times.

But John Deere’s Supply Chain Solutions teams were more than up to the task. They successfully used Scrum as a team framework to increase throughput and Scrum@Scale as an organizational framework to optimize alignment and value delivery. Together they helped Supply Chain Solutions navigate the challenges caused by a global pandemic and major supply chain disruptions.

John Deere didn’t just survive these complex times, the company thrived. At the end of November 2021, the company announced record profits.

Jay Strief, the Group Engineering Manager of Supply Chain Solutions, connects this success in part to managing through supply chain issues and puts it in personal terms. “The awesome story here is the change in the culture; innovation, risk-taking, and many clear examples of teams stepping out of their comfort zone to deliver new value.” All of this, he adds, “was made possible through our digital transformation.“

9.1 Why Supply Chain Solutions Went Agile

Powers has been a leader in the information technology space at John Deere for most of her two-decade career.

She helmed the company’s Business Process Integration organization and an ERP implementation for the company’s Construction & Forestry Division. Powers has also led John Deere’s global analytics organization and a variety of technical teams within finance and manufacturing. She is a master of the “classic” ways of working.

When asked if there’s anything Powers misses about those pre-Agile days she quickly answers “no,” before adding, “looking back at the challenges we had to overcome in the last 18 months, I can’t fathom trying to do that without being this Agile.”

Traditional supply chain management tactics had long served John Deere well. After all, it’s impossible to grow into a Fortune 100 company with a large global footprint without efficiently coordinating your network of suppliers and deliveries.

But, as a company, John Deere understands that good enough today may not work tomorrow. Powers and her teams believed the traditional approach wouldn’t be fast enough or flexible enough to keep up with the rate of innovation and business demands for digital solutions from the global supply chain organization.

Powers says procurement of digital solutions could take months to materialize – or longer. The needs of the business line making the request often changed during that time. What was delivered was what they originally asked for but not always what they now knew they needed. It was clear that John Deere needed to adapt to continue to support customers with growing technology needs and increasing expectations for efficiency.

Supply Chain Solutions needed to move faster and more efficiently to help John Deere continue to be an industry leader. So, they started to wonder, “How do we eliminate as many handoffs as possible? How do we streamline this process? How do we better interact with the customer or internal partners?” And Powers asked herself, “How do we ensure we have the right skills and the right talent to be able to respond faster?”

Innovation is one of John Deere’s core values and the company prides itself on creative problem solving. This is part of the DNA of the company and its culture. When Powers and her team learned about the Agile Operating Model (AOM) — a transformation strategy that had been introduced to modernize the John Deere Global IT group — and the collaboration with Scrum Inc. they pushed to be included in the second wave of the transformation.

In early 2020, while still in the immersion phase of their training, Supply Chain Solutions was called on to support the Global Supply Management organization dealing with the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (V.U.C.A.) that has now become the norm for supply chains worldwide.   

9.2 Overcoming V.U.C.A.: COVID-19 and Supply Chain Disruptions

Designated as an essential business — John Deere has continued operating and building products that help build and maintain critical infrastructure and feed the planet — throughout the pandemic.

The challenge of keeping all of John Deere’s assembly lines running would be immense. But as Powers notes, “John Deere always rises to the challenge.”

At this point, John Deere’s Supply Chain Solution teams had effectively implemented both  Scrum  and  Scrum@Scale . Powers says both frameworks helped Supply Chain Solutions live up to its name.

No longer slowed by the overly burdensome and bureaucratic approach, the teams quickly pivoted from a primarily strategic focus to one that balanced both the tactical and strategic needs required during the pandemic.

Working in two-week Sprints allowed the teams to replan and reprioritize faster. They pivoted to overcome new pain points or the constantly changing conditions on the ground. John Deere’s Supply Chain Solutions teams have always had strong and reliable analytics and could see potential bottlenecks in their network. When paired with Scrum and Scrum@Scale, these teams now had the flexibility to act to counter the bottlenecks before they choked off critical parts.

Perhaps the most important change, however, came from the stronger alignment and team empowerment that both Scrum and Scrum@Scale helped build.

In the old ways of working, Supply Chain Solutions teams would often be told to undertake a predetermined solution by buyers and supply base managers, limiting the opportunity for Supply Chain Solution team members to share their expertise.

The Agile mindset Scrum and Scrum@Scale bring means those who do the work, and know it best, are free to figure out the most effective way to get it done. “To me, that was the big game-changer,” explains Powers, “because you have that collective brainpower, the folks who know the data and know the ins and outs that can provide things the business didn’t even dream of.”

Take the example of the shortage of materials brought on by the pandemic. Within their ferrous components commodity group, the supply chain analytics and sourcing teams took a new approach to manage cost and risk. John Deere leveraged its bill of materials to generate greater visibility into everything it purchased throughout its supply chain. John Deere used a tier taxonomy to indicate the difference between a completed component (Tier 1) and the pieces needed to make it (Tier 2). Heightened visibility into these different tiers allowed the company to creatively overcome bottlenecks before problems arose. Thus, better managing cost and risk.

“While the initial scope started as a single commodity, additional opportunities quickly came into view as the analytics group developed comprehensive views of our total spend by category,” says Powers. “The evolution of the tiered spend project was a great illustration of Agile in action. The iterative development and ongoing connection between category managers and analytics team members ensured that the end result was useful for a broad group of internal teams.”

The team’s solution to 2021’s worldwide microchip shortage was even more creative.

Normally, John Deere does not buy microchips directly. Instead, it buys completed boards that contain those chips from suppliers. Still, explains Powers, Supply Chain Solutions knew the shortage could detrimentally affect their businesses because “if the suppliers can’t get the chips, they can’t make the boards and we can’t put them into machines.”

So, Supply Chain Solutions asked their network how they could help suppliers secure the microchips directly. They assigned a few team members to create automation scripts that scoured the internet for microchips that would meet their specific needs and when they would be available. This new system helped supplement their suppliers.

All this, Powers explains, came with just one caveat for their suppliers, “all the chips John Deere helped secure would be sold back to us on a completed board.”

Again, John Deere’s lines kept running. That’s something other major manufacturers could not say. “Obviously we’re facing the same challenges other companies are,” explains Powers, “the difference is our ability to step out and do things we normally don’t do to help our suppliers. This, in turn, helps us secure what we need.”

Same team, new operating model and a new mindset, and the “ability to successfully operate in any situation.” That is what the Agile Operating Model, Scrum, and Scrum@Scale delivered for John Deere’s Global IT organization.

Strief puts it this way: “The digitalization of our supply chain business is not just about new technology, it is transformational in terms of new business value we are delivering. Along the way, we have delivered higher job satisfaction for our software engineers and continue to invest in developing cutting-edge skills in our people.”  

9.3 Structured to Deliver Strategic and Tactical Goals

As we know, 2020 and 2021 were some of the most challenging years supply chain professionals had faced in the modern era. Just delivering tactical goals could be a major accomplishment given the level of V.U.C.A. the function faced.

The ingenuity and dedication of John Deere’s Supply Chain Solutions team members, and their use of Scrum and Scrum@Scale, meant they could deliver both the tactical and strategic.

Along with their Scrum training, Supply Chain Solutions Agile journey began with two significant structural changes which helped the teams deliver beneficial outcomes.

As Powers explains, the first such change evolved how the unit was led. “We took what use to be a single management position and broke it out into two roles with different, more focused accountabilities.”

One role, the business digital product lead, focuses on the business problems the unit was helping to solve as well as examine ways technology can help drive those desired outcomes. This is Powers’ role.

The second role, held by Strief, focuses on ensuring teams have the right capabilities with digital skills, technical acumen, and depth of experience to innovate and deliver successfully and rapidly.

This new leadership structure ensures both Powers and Strief are laser-focused on their specific areas of expertise. They have clear accountabilities, know what each is responsible for, and allow for cleaner lines of communication and minimal bureaucratic hurdles. Powers believes that this split structure, “is what really makes this model work.”

The second significant structural change involved the teams themselves.

“In the past, teams were structured around an application or specific technology,” says Powers, “so a shift from a strategic project to a tactical need could slow that strategic project down significantly.”

Powers says, “We started really looking at our applications and processes,” in new ways. They identified what was obsolete as well as what could be streamlined or grouped together. Supply Chain Solutions then completely revamped their product taxonomy around these newly identified value streams and restructured their teams accordingly.

Besides being more efficient, Powers notes this new product structure also created, “a stronger sense of empowerment and ownership,” throughout the team — from the product owner to the team members. “That’s their baby and their pride and joy.”

So, they get to really take that to the next level and know they had a real hand in making a positive impact,” versus just checking off a list of requirements and requests.

The teams also changed how they worked.

In Scrum, teams break large work into smaller increments. This, says Powers, along with a well-prioritized backlog meant “the teams were able to move from the tactical to the strategic without losing momentum.” The net result of these changes in structure and process, combined with John Deere’s strong analytics, is clear; John Deere’s lines kept running — through the pandemic, supply bottlenecks, and shortages. At the same time, the Supply Chain Solutions teams were able to deliver multiple award-winning strategic initiatives that helped the company control or recoup costs and boost efficiency. These included:

• Modernizing the ‘Cost Central’ internal application that is a hub for material cost management throughout the company. The upgrades included increased its ease of use, visibility of data like expected cost, and an overall improvement in user experience and engagement.
• A strategic initiative that leveraged analytics and the increased visibility spurred by John Deere’s Agile transformation for digital products that  allowed the company to recoup some $20 million in duty drawbacks .
• A strategic initiative that combined machine learning and analytics to increase leverage buying power and cost control by creating visibility into parts with similar dimensions, components, performance, and material characteristics but different part numbers.

9.4 Additional Results and Metrics

John Deere’s leadership began their Agile transformation by setting ambitious goals. Each represents a level of targeted improvement any company would love to achieve.

Throw in the unprecedented level of complexity and V.U.C.A. that have been the hallmark of supply chains throughout 2020 and 2021 and you might expect that John Deere’s Supply Chain Solutions teams would, at best, come close to achieving them.

Instead, just six months after the end of the immersion phase of their training, Supply Chain Solutions has smashed through those ambitious goals and has achieved far more than anticipated. The data collected by John Deere on five specific areas tell the story best:

• Cycle Time:  Before John Deere’s Agile transformation, the time it took for Supply Chain Solutions to go from idea to delivery was 54 days. Now it takes just 11 days.  This represents a 79 percent improvement , far more than the 40 percent targeted by leadership.
• Time to Market:  Leadership wanted to decrease this by 40 percent.  Supply Chain Solutions has decreased it by 66 percent , from a baseline of 89 days to 30.
• Functions/Features Delivered per Sprint:  Supply Chain Solutions was delivering nine functions per sprint before their Agile transformation. Leadership wanted that number to increase by 125 percent. Six months after their immersion phase ended, Supply Chain Solutions is now delivering 49 functions per sprint,  an improvement of 448 percent .
• Deploys:  Here leadership targeted a 125 percent increase over the baseline of 10. Instead, Supply Chain Solutions has increased that to 67, a 567 percent improvement .
• Cost Efficiency:  Hiring the right people, with the right skills for the right roles allowed Supply Chain Solutions to eliminate ‘middlemen’ and costly handoffs. This allowed the teams to deliver the above results while  reducing overall costs by 20 percent .
• Team eNPS: Employee Net Promoter Score, or eNPS, is an effective way to measure team happiness and engagement. A score above 50 is considered excellent so leadership set a target score of 50+ for this metric.  Supply Chain Solutions’ current eNPS score is 60 .

To Powers, that last data point personifies their Agile transformation. “Having fun at work and getting things done are not mutually exclusive,” she says, “we went through this journey and people started having fun, and we’re seeing the difference in the results.”

9.5 Conclusion 

At the start of their Agile journey, many questioned if it would work in the structured and intertwined environment. “Lots of people doubted that Agile would work here. That you could do an Agile transformation in Supply Chain Solutions.”

Powers freely admits that she was one of those doubters.

Then, she had her “a-ha” moment.

“Suddenly I saw how it absolutely applies to everything you do,” no matter how complex or intertwined. She admits that “It may take a little blind faith to start your Agile journey,” before adding,” the pieces will make sense. The teams will deliver more, you’ll accomplish more, and everybody will love what they’re doing.” That, she says, is the game-changer. For Supply Chain Solutions, Agile allows them to adapt while the game itself keeps changing.

10. Future of Scrum, Scrum@Scale, and the Agile Operating Model at John Deere

The success of the AOM built on Scrum and Scrum@Scale as well as DevOps, Organization Design and a modernized technology stack is undeniable.

The group’s Scrum Teams are happier, more empowered, and more engaged. As Amy Willard notes, “We can deliver functionality that our customers love faster than ever before.” Rework is down. Quality is up.

“The verdict is in,” says Josh Edgin – The AOM was clearly “the right thing to do.”

Successful implementations are known to spread organically throughout an organization. Well beyond the group that launched the transformation. Edgin says this has already begun at John Deere.

“One of our Agile coaches was asked to go down to the factory floor and work with one of the factory teams. They had tremendous success.”

Global IT Vice President Ganesh Jayaram sees “The fact that Agile has made it into the vernacular of the broader company,” as one of his favorite signs of success.

Research and development, manufacturing, human resources, are all areas where he believes the AOM can help drive beneficial outcomes. “You can transform any function,” says Jayaram, “You have a backlog, you prioritize, you become customer-centric.” That, he says, would be the AOM’s biggest win.

As a company, John Deere’s higher purpose is clear: We run so life can leap forward. The Global IT group is positioned to help achieve that purpose for decades to come.

Update: On May 31st, 2022, Ganesh Jayaram was appointed the Chief Information Officer at John Deere. 

How John Deere’s Global IT Group Implemented a Holistic Transformation Powered by Scrum@Scale, Scrum, DevOps, and a Modernized Technology Stack

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Salesforce: An Agile Case Study

Key Takeaways: What worked for Salesforce 

• Organizational culture and established values prime an organization to be ready to take on an Agile framework.
• When Agile values are communicated from the top, they are infused into the organizational mindset to occur organically without enforcement as “rules.”
• Finding the right language to explain Agile to un-transitioned departments encourages teams to use Agile frameworks in a way that works for them.  

  In 2006 Salesforce decided to go all in with agile and transform their entire R&D department from traditional “Waterfall” SDLC — a top-down software lifecycle process — to Scrum, an iterative agile framework. At the outset of the transition, company leadership knew they would face roadblocks if they couldn’t make clear to employees the compatibility between Scrum principles, their company’s mission, and their individual employees’ values. Without this critical first step, the same lightweight, adaptable quality that makes Scrum successful could also render it susceptible to misinterpretation. So, Salesforce began its agile transformation not by blindly adopting the Scrum framework, but by first educating employees on Scrum’s alignment with preexisting company values.    Their “Educate Without Enforcing” strategy generated positive results, in part because upper management and staff already shared a coherent sense of the company’s overall mission and each employee’s individual purpose and could easily explain how the Scrum framework was uniquely suited to achieve those ends.    “We are fortunate that our founders were as intentional about the culture they wanted to create as they were about the products they wanted to build,” says Arun Ramanna, an Enterprise Agile Coach at Salesforce. “Agile frameworks such as Scrum, XP, and Lean face less transitional challenges at Salesforce than at others, because Salesforce has an environment of trust, customer success, diversity, equality, and innovation.”   It was in 1999 that Salesforce founded their popular  V2MOM Process . The acronym stands for vision, values, methods, obstacles and measures, and is used as a management tool for organization wide communication and adaptive development.V2MOM had pre-established transparency throughout the organization, so the company had a cultivated sense of trust vital to successful Scrum practices. And as a result, Salesforce proved to be better prepared for Scrum than many other pre- or partially agile organizations.   Yet challenges remained. Project managers feared losing the accurate timetables and deliverables on which they relied, and it was difficult to explain to them the purposes of agility beyond its concrete definition or discrete practices. To address these issues, the company held frequent meetings with departments that had not switched to an agile framework, framing agility as a mindset uniquely compatible with — and already present within — the organization’s mission and values. Leaders were able to explain how and why agility aligned with Salesforce and its employees’ sense of shared purpose.    Salesforce also used the strategy of framing Agile techniques, such as XP practices, Scrum artifacts, and Lean thinking as “tools.” This helped the company explain the benefits of agility to the organization without imposing Agile principles as mandates.    “We often hear our leaders say things like ‘Make sure we are focused on our customer’s success’, ‘Better, better, never done!’ and ‘Let’s approach it with a beginner’s mind’ to keep us on this journey,” Arun explains. These phrases embody the values of the  Agile Manifesto . Salesforce leaders regularly communicate the sentiment of agile without directly enforcingthe values as hard rules.   “Salesforce is always looking to improve our technology, products, and processes to make us more agile and customer focused,” continues Arun. “It’s because Salesforce continues to have both ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ organizational buy in and support for agile that it is able to be so successful and adaptive.”    Today, Salesforce continues to explore new approaches in applying agility within its different departments. As an organization, they remain flexible regarding their methods and open-minded about their results and are still discovering what practices work in different organizational contexts. Currently, their most essential task has become learning to tailor Agile methods to allow all departments and teams to have an iterative approach to work.    “The response has been very positive thus far, and it would be hard to imagine ever going back to a traditional waterfall approach,” Arun concludes. “In fact, our agile coaching team’s long-term goal is to spread this agile mindset beyond our R&D, IT and Marketing departments to our entire organization, and to all our partners and customers.”

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• What is Agile methodology? (A beginner’ ...

What is Agile methodology? (A beginner’s guide)

Agile methodology is a project management framework that breaks projects down into several dynamic phases, commonly known as sprints. In this article, get a high-level overview of Agile project management, plus a few common frameworks to choose the right one for your team.

Scrum, Kanban, waterfall, Agile. 

Agile project management isn’t just useful for software project management—all types of teams have been successful with this dynamic methodology. If you’re looking to get started with Agile, you’ve come to the right place.

What is the Agile methodology?

Agile methodology is a project management framework that breaks projects down into several dynamic phases, commonly known as sprints. 

The Agile framework is an iterative methodology . After every sprint, teams reflect and look back to see if there was anything that could be improved so they can adjust their strategy for the next sprint.

What is the Agile Manifesto?

The Agile Manifesto is a document that focuses on four values and 12 principles for Agile software development. It was published in February 2001 by 17 software developers who needed an alternative to the more linear product development process .  

What are the 4 pillars of Agile?

As outlined in the Agile Manifesto, there are four main values of Agile project management:

Individuals over processes and tools: Agile teams value team collaboration and teamwork over working independently and doing things "by the book.”

Working software over comprehensive documentation: The software that Agile teams develop should work. Additional work, like documentation, is not as important as developing good software.

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation: Customers are extremely important within the Agile methodology. Agile teams allow customers to guide where the software should go. Therefore, customer collaboration is more important than the finer details of contract negotiation.

Responding to change over following a plan: One of the major benefits of Agile project management is that it allows teams to be flexible. This framework allows for teams to quickly shift strategies and workflows without derailing an entire project.

What are the 12 Agile principles?

The four values of Agile are the pillars of Agile methodology. From those values, the team developed 12 principles. 

If the four values of Agile are the weight-bearing pillars of a house, then these 12 principles are the rooms you can build within that house. These principles can be easily adapted to fit the needs of your team. 

The 12 principles used in Agile methodology are:

Satisfy customers through early, continuous improvement and delivery. When customers receive new updates regularly, they're more likely to see the changes they want within the product. This leads to happier, more satisfied customers—and more recurring revenue.

Welcome changing requirements, even late in the project. The Agile framework is all about adaptability. In iterative processes like Agile, being inflexible causes more harm than good. 

Deliver value frequently. Similar to principle #1, delivering value to your customers or stakeholders frequently makes it less likely for them to churn. 

Break the silos of your projects. Collaboration is key in the Agile framework. The goal is for people to break out of their own individual projects and collaborate together more frequently . 

Build projects around motivated individuals. Agile works best when teams are committed and actively working to achieve a goal. 

The most effective way to communicate is face-to-face. If you’re working on a distributed team, spend time communicating in ways that involve face-to-face communication like Zoom calls. 

Working software is the primary measure of progress. The most important thing that teams should strive for with the Agile framework is the product. The goal here is to prioritize functional software over everything else.

Maintain a sustainable working pace. Some aspects of Agile can be fast-paced, but it shouldn't be so fast that team members burn out . The goal is to maintain sustainability throughout the project.

Continuous excellence enhances agility . If the team develops excellent code in one sprint, they can continue to build off of it the next. Continually creating great work allows teams to move faster in the future. 

Simplicity is essential. Sometimes the simplest solution is the best solution. Agile aims to not overcomplicate things and find simple answers to complex problems. 

Self-organizing teams generate the most value. Similar to principle #5, proactive teams become valuable assets to the company as they strive to deliver value.

Regularly reflect and adjust your way of work to boost effectiveness . Retrospective meetings are a common Agile practice. It's a dedicated time for teams to look back and reflect on their performance and adapt their behaviors for the future.

What are the benefits of the Agile development methodology?

You commonly find Agile project management used in application development or other types of software development. This is because software is constantly changing, and the needs of the product have to change with it. 

Because of this, linear project management methods like the waterfall model are less effective. Here are a few other reasons why teams use Agile:

Agile methods are adaptable

There's a reason why they call it the Agile methodology. One of the main benefits of using Agile processes in software development is the ability to shift strategies quickly, without disrupting the flow of a project. 

Because phases in the traditional waterfall method flow into one another, shifting strategies is challenging and can disrupt the rest of the project roadmap . Since software development is a much more adaptable field, project managing rapid changes in the traditional sense can be challenging. This is part of the reason why Agile project management is favored in software development.

Agile fosters collaborative teamwork

One of the Agile principles states that the most effective way to communicate with your team is face-to-face. Combine this with the principle that encourages teams to break project silos and you have a recipe for collaborative teamwork. 

While technology has changed since Agile’s inception and work has shifted to welcome more remote-friendly policies, the idea of working face-to-face still hasn't changed.

Agile methods focus on customer needs

One of the unique aspects of software development is that teams can focus on customer needs much more closely than other industries. With the rise of cloud-based software, teams can get feedback from their actual customers quickly. 

Since customer satisfaction is a key driver for software development, it’s easy to see why it was included in the Agile process. By collaborating with customers, Agile teams can prioritize features that focus on customer needs. When those needs change, teams can take an Agile approach and shift to a different project. 

Agile methodologies

The Agile framework is an umbrella for several different variations. Here are a few of the most common Agile methodologies. 

Kanban is a visual approach to Agile. Teams use online Kanban board tools to represent where certain tasks are in the development process. Tasks are represented by cards on a board, and stages are represented in columns. As team members work on tasks, they move cards from the backlog column to the column that represents the stage the task is in.

This method is a good way for teams to identify roadblocks and to visualize the amount of work that’s getting done. 

Scrum is a common Agile methodology for small teams and also involves sprints. The team is led by a Scrum master whose main job is to clear all obstacles for others executing the day-to-day work. 

Scrum teams meet daily to discuss active tasks, roadblocks, and anything else that may affect the development team.  

Sprint planning: This event kicks off the sprint. Sprint planning outlines what can be delivered in a sprint (and how).

Sprint retrospective : This recurring meeting acts as a sprint review—to iterate on learnings from a previous sprint that will improve and streamline the next one. 

Extreme Programming (XP)

Typically used in software development, Extreme Programming (XP) is an Agile framework that outlines values that will allow your team to work together more effectively.  

The five values of XP include:

Communication

Similar to daily Scrum standups, there are regular releases and iterations, yet XP is much more technical in its approach. If your dev team needs to quickly release and respond to customer requests, XP focuses on the “how” it will get done. 

Adaptive Project Framework (APF)

The Adaptive Project Framework, also known as Adaptive Project Management (APM) grew from the idea that unknown factors can show up at any time during a project. This technique is mainly used for IT projects where more traditional project management techniques don’t apply.

This framework is based on the idea that project resources can change at any time. For example, budgets can change, timelines can shift, or team members working on the project may transition to different teams. APF focuses on the resources that a project has, as opposed to the resources a project needs. 

Extreme Project Management (XPM)

This type of project management is often used for very complex projects with a high level of uncertainty. This approach involves constantly adapting processes until they lead to the desired result. This type of project involves many spontaneous changes and it’s normal for teams to switch strategies from one week to the next. 

XPM requires a lot of flexibility. This is one of the reasons why each sprint is short—only a few weeks maximum. This methodology allows for frequent changes, trial-and-error approaches to problems, and many iterations of self-correction.

Adaptive Software Development (ASD)

This Agile methodology enables teams to quickly adapt to changing requirements. The main focus of this process is continuous adaptation. The phases of this project type —speculate, collaborate, and learn—allow for continuous learning as the project progresses. 

It’s not uncommon for teams running ASD to be in all three phases of ASD at once. Because of its non-linear structure, it’s common for the phases to overlap. Because of the fluidity of this type of management, there’s a higher likelihood that the constant repetition of the three phases helps team members identify and solve problems much quicker than standard project management methods.

Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM)

The Dynamic Systems Development Method is an Agile method that focuses on a full project lifecycle. Because of this, DSDM has a more rigorous structure and foundation, unlike other Agile methods. 

There are four main phases of DSDM:

Feasibility and business study

Functional mode or prototype iteration

Design and build iteration

Implementation

Feature Driven Development (FDD)

Feature Driven Development blends different Agile best practices. While still an iterative method of project management, this model focuses more on the exact features of a software that the team is working to develop. Feature-driven development relies heavily on customer input, as the features the team prioritizes are the features that the customers need. 

This model also allows teams to update projects frequently. If there is an error, it's quick to cycle through and implement a fix as the phases of this framework are constantly moving. 

Organize Agile processes with Asana

You’ll often hear software development teams refer to the Agile process—but any team can run Agile. If you’re looking for a more flexible project management framework, try Agile. 

Related resources

How Asana uses work management to streamline project intake processes

6 ways to develop adaptability in the workplace and embrace change

How to run more effective stand-up meetings

Waterfall, Agile, Kanban, and Scrum: What’s the difference?

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In-Depth: The Evidence-Based Business Case For Agile

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What is the business case for Agile teams? Is it  really that  important that they are autonomous, able to release frequently, interact closely with stakeholders and spend all that time on continuous improvement? Or is all that just hype? Or maybe even counterproductive?

Yes, we believe all these things are important. And so does probably everyone else in our community. But what is the evidence we have for this? What proof do we have that we aren’t just selling a modern equivalent of snake oil? We think we do well to  base our beliefs about Agile more on evidence . This allows us to test our beliefs and also makes our case stronger in case they are supported.

This post is our attempt to bring an evidence-based perspective to the business case of Agile teams. We will share results from scientific studies that we located through  Google Scholar . And we share results from our own analyses based on actual data from stakeholders and Scrum teams that we collected through the  Scrum Team Survey .

This post is part of our  “in-depth” series . Each post discusses scientific research that is relevant to our work with Scrum and Agile teams. We hope to contribute to  more evidence-based conversations  in our community and a stronger reliance on robust research over personal opinions.

A working definition of Agile and Stakeholders

Before we begin, we need to define some of the terms we will use throughout this post. The first term is  Stakeholder . Throughout this post, we define them as “all users, customers, and other people or groups who have a clear stake in the outcomes of what this team produces, and invest money, time or both in making sure that happens”. So this excludes people who have an opinion about the product but don’t stand to lose  anything  when the team fails.

The second term I’d like to define is  Agile  or  agility . What do we actually mean when we talk about an “Agile team”? In its broadest sense, we mean that these teams practice the principles of the  Agile Manifesto . But this is still rather vague. We could say that these teams practice Agile methodologies, like Scrum or XP, and are therefore Agile. But adherence to a framework or prescribed process does  not  guarantee agility. In fact, we’ve written the  Zombie Scrum Survival Guide  specifically to shine a light onto all those teams who think they have checked all the boxes of the Scrum framework, and are still not moving.

“Adherence to a framework or prescribed process does  not  guarantee agility.”

I prefer a process-based definition of agility. This definition answers the question: “What kind of processes typically happen in Agile teams that distinguish them from non-Agile teams?”. We worked with Prof. Daniel Russo of the University of Aalborg to answer this question with data from almost 2.000 Scrum teams.  In a scientific study , we identified five  core processes  — or factors— that happen in and around Agile teams at varying levels of quality:

• Teams work to be as  responsive  as possible through automation, refinement, and a high(er) release frequency.
• Teams show concern for the  needs of their stakeholders  by collaborating with them closely and making sure that what is valuable to them is represented in their work and goals.
• Teams engage in  continuous improvement  to improve where they can through frequent reflection, shared learning, and creating a psychologically safe environment.
• Teams expand and use their  autonomy  to manage their work and bring their skills together in the most effective ways.
• In the immediate environment of Scrum teams,  management supports  what teams do and helps them where possible.

Although we used Scrum teams for our investigation, these processes are generic enough to apply to Agile teams in general. We collected the data through our  Scrum Team Survey . This tool uses  a validated and scale-based questionnaire  to allow teams to diagnose and improve their process in an evidence-based way. You can use the free version for individual teams.

For this post, we used a sample of 1.963 Scrum teams and 5.273 team members. The sample was cleaned of fake and careless responses and corrected for social desirability where relevant. Our sample includes teams from all sectors, sizes, and regions.

Finding #1: Teams Vary Widely In Their Actual Agility

In our sample of 1.963 Scrum teams, we observed a wide range of scores on the five core processes of agility. We calculated an overall agility score for teams and categorized them into three buckets — low, moderate, and high — for easier interpretation. The histogram below shows the differences visually:

There are two caveats to this histogram. First, the cutoffs for low, moderate, and high agility are fairly arbitrary. In reality, agility is obviously a continuum that teams traverse. Second, there is some circularity because we calculate the overall agility of a team as an aggregate of the five core processes. So it is not surprising that the scores improve as teams become more Agile.

However, the histogram illustrates nicely the  size  of this increase, which is both significant for all differences (p<.001)  and  highly substantial. It also illustrates well how all processes improve, and not just one or two. They seem to be connected. The results also affirm that calling yourself a Scrum team — as the teams in this sample mostly did — is no guarantee of actual agility. At the same time, we can clearly see that many Scrum teams  are  Agile.

“It is clear from these results that identifying yourself as an Agile or Scrum team is no guarantee of actual agility.”

So we know now have a better sense of the differences between the quality of the core processes at different “levels” of agility. However, the key question is whether this actually makes a difference in important business outcomes. Are more Agile teams indeed better at producing important business outcomes than less Agile teams?

“Are more Agile teams indeed better at producing important business outcomes than fewer Agile teams?”

Finding #2: Agile Teams Have More Satisfied Stakeholders

Ultimately, we believe that a strong business case lies with how effectively Agile teams can serve the needs of stakeholders, like users, customers, and other people with a clear stake. There is clearly a strong economic incentive for organizations to keep stakeholders happy, as they are the people who pay for, or use, their products.

But do Agile teams have more satisfied stakeholders than less Agile teams? Fortunately, the  Scrum Team Survey  allows teams to ask their stakeholders to evaluate their outcomes. We ask stakeholders to evaluate this on four dimensions: quality, responsiveness, release frequency, and team value. For this analysis, we use the evaluations of 857 stakeholders for 241 teams. 49% of these represented users, 28% customers, and 22% internal stakeholders.

We can statistically test the hypothesis that teams are increasingly able to satisfy their stakeholders as their Agility increases. For this, we used a simple statistical technique called multiple regression analysis. We entered the overall stakeholder satisfaction as the predicted value, and the five core processes as predictors. The regression model was significant (p <.001) and explained 29.2% of the observed variance in stakeholder satisfaction. This may not seem  that  high, but values above 20% are considered “very strong” in the social sciences. The scatterplot shown below shows the distribution of teams based on stakeholder satisfaction (vertical) and Agility (horizontal). Each dot represents a team:

A scatterplot and the results from a regression analysis may not be intuitive for many readers, especially those not familiar with statistics. So we also created a histogram by plotting the least Agile teams against the most Agile teams. It is a bit simplistic, but it illustrates the differences more dramatically.

There is one caveat to these results. The scatterplot suggests that teams are more likely to invite stakeholders when they are already quite Agile. This makes sense; non-Agile teams may interact less with their stakeholders and thus see fewer opportunities to invite them to evaluate the outcomes. But this means we lack data from teams that score very low on agility. However, it is likely that the difference would be even  stronger  if such stakeholders were included.

The bottom line is clear though. Agile teams have more satisfied stakeholders than less Agile teams. This effect is also very strong. So high autonomy, high responsiveness, high continuous improvement, high stakeholder concern,  and  high management support  clearly  go hand-in-hand with higher stakeholder satisfaction. Simply put; if organizations want more satisfied stakeholders, investing in the five processes of agility is a very clear evidence-based recommendation.

“The bottom line of the results is clear though. Agile teams have more satisfied stakeholders than non-Agile teams.”

Finding #3: Agile Teams Have Higher Morale

The second part of our business case can be made by looking at how agility affects team members. Employees are the “human capital” of modern-day organizations. Happy employees allow companies to save money on absenteeism, sick leave, and the hiring and onboarding of new employees to replace others who leave the company.

So it is helpful to look at the morale of teams. Team morale, or ‘esprit de corps’, reflects how motivating and purposeful the work feels to a team ( Manning, 1991 ). Many meta-analyses — statistical aggregations of datasets from many other empirical studies — have shown strong benefits of high morale and its corollaries, like job satisfaction. It reduces turnover and absenteeism among employees ( Hacket & Guion, 1989 ). It also increases performance ( Judge et. al., 2001 ) and proactive behavior ( LePine, Erez & Johnson, 2002 ).

“So there is a clear economic incentive for companies to encourage high morale in teams.”

But is morale higher in Agile teams than in less-Agile teams? To answer this question, we analyzed data from 1.976 teams and 5.273 team members from the  Scrum Team Survey .

So with this data, we ran another linear multiple regression analysis with team morale as the predicted value, and the five core factors as predictors. The resulting model was significant (p <.001) and explained 44.6% of the observed variance in team morale. This is a strong result when we consider that values above 20% are already considered “very strong” in the social sciences. The scatterplot is shown below. Each dot represents a team. The line reflects the optimal regression line. It is clearly visible that as the agility of a team increases (vertical), team morale also increases (horizontal).

We also created a histogram to plot the morale of the most Agile teams against that of the least Agile teams in our database, which is more visually clear:

So what do these numbers mean in practice? Generally speaking, morale will be  much  higher in Agile teams compared to less Agile teams. The morale in the highest-scoring teams (on agility) is almost twice as high as in the lowest-scoring teams. So high autonomy, high responsiveness, high continuous improvement, high stakeholder concern,  and  high management support  clearly  go hand-in-hand with high team morale.

“Generally speaking, morale will be much higher in Agile teams compared to non-Agile teams.”

Intermission: A Note On Causality

Careful readers may have wondered: “But wait! Correlation doesn’t imply causation”. The observable fact that team morale and stakeholder satisfaction are higher in Agile teams does not necessarily mean that agility is the cause. And this is true. It is possible that the effect is actually the reverse; high morale or high stakeholder satisfaction drives teams to become more Agile. Or both bias teams to evaluate their processes in a more positive light than when morale or stakeholder satisfaction is lower. It is also possible that other variables explain both results. For example, an organization with a very flat hierarchical structure  may  both enable high agility as well as high morale or high stakeholder satisfaction.

Unfortunately, causality is very hard to establish with certainty. This requires highly controlled experiments where only the level of agility is manipulated in a team. But how can one feasibly do that? Another approach is to track many organizations over time as they adopt Agile methodologies, while also measuring anything else that could influence their results other than agility itself. It would be wonderful to have such data! However, the sheer effort involved is so gargantuan that this is close to impossible. Fortunately, we don’t need to put the bar  that  high. While correlation doesn’t imply causation, it can certainly make a case for it. Especially when we have strong corroborating evidence from other sources. Our data clearly shows that agility  is  associated with team morale and stakeholder satisfaction. So if you measure that one is going up, the others will probably go up too. Thus, it is probably easier for organizations to create environments for teams that encourage their Agility (e.g. high autonomy, responsiveness, etc) than it is to directly change the morale of team members or even the satisfaction of stakeholders.

But let's take a look at potential corroborating evidence. What do scientific studies have to say?

Finding #4: Scientific Studies Corroborate That Agility Generates Better Business Outcomes

We defined agility in terms of five processes. Agile teams are  responsive , know who their  stakeholders  are and what they need, have  high autonomy , and  improve continuously . They are also  supported by management . What do scientific studies have to say about the business outcomes of Agile methodologies, as well as the factors we just mentioned? So we went to Google Scholar and  searched for review articles .

Cardozo et. al. (2010)  reviewed 28 scientific studies that investigated how Scrum is associated with overall business outcomes. A strength of such a review is that it allows for the identification of patterns across many studies. The authors identified five core outcomes of Scrum: 1) higher productivity in teams, 2) higher customer satisfaction, 3) higher quality, 4) increased motivation in teams and 5) a general reduction in costs. While this study covers even more business outcomes, the second and fourth points match our findings.

A critical part of Agile methods is that new iterations of a product are released more frequently than in more traditional approaches. Several empirical studies have indeed found that teams with a frequent delivery strategy are more likely to deliver successful project outcomes and satisfy stakeholders than teams that do not ( Chow & Cao, 2008 ,  Jørgensen, 2016 ). This also matches our findings for stakeholder satisfaction.

But a high delivery strategy is of little value if what goes out to stakeholders doesn’t match their needs, or doesn’t reach the right people. So teams need to develop a good understanding of who their stakeholders are and what they need.  Van Kelle et. al. (2015)  collected data from 141 team members, Scrum Masters, and Product Owners from 40 projects. They found that the ability of teams to develop a shared sense of value contributed significantly and strongly to project success. They also found that the overall agility of teams increased the chance of project success.  Hoda, Stuart & Marshall  (2011) interviewed 30 Agile practitioners over a period of 3 years. They found that teams that collaborate closely with customers are more successful. However, they also observed that customers are rarely as involved as would be expected from Agile methodologies. This supports our finding that stakeholder satisfaction goes up as teams become more involved with their stakeholders (stakeholder concern).

“The ability of teams to develop a shared sense of value contributed significantly and strongly to project success.”

While high responsiveness and high concern for the needs of stakeholders are arguably the two pillars that distinguish Agile teams from non-Agile teams, these pillars need a good foundation. This is where team autonomy and continuous improvement come into play. Both are important characteristics of Agile teams because it allows them to remain effective in the face of complex, unpredictable work. Many studies have identified high autonomy as an important prerequisite for Agile teams ( Moe, Dingsøyr & Dybå, 2010 ;  Donmez & Gudela, 2013 ;  Tripp & Armstrong, 2018 ;  Melo et. al. 2013 ).  Lee & Xia (2010)  surveyed 505 Agile projects and found that high autonomy allowed teams to respond more quickly to challenges. They also note that this is particularly relevant to complex challenges, which is typically the case for the product innovation that happens in Agile teams. As for continuous improvement, this is generally more a climate in teams than a process. It is marked by high safety, shared learning, high-quality Sprint Retrospectives, and ambitious quality standards.  Hoda & Noble (2017)  identified learning processes as essential for teams to become Agile. So while autonomy and continuous improvement may not  directly  result in business outcomes, they need to be present in order for Agile teams to generate outcomes that satisfy stakeholders, and through a process that is also satisfying to team members.

“While autonomy and continuous improvement may not  directly  result in business outcomes, they need to be present in order for Agile teams to generate outcomes that satisfy stakeholders, and through a process that is also satisfying to team members.”

Finally, this brings us to the role that management plays. Because their support is consistently identified by scientists as the most critical success factor to make all the above possible ( Van Waardenburg & Van Vliet, 2013 ;  de Souza Bemerjo et. al., 2014 ;  Young & Jordan, 2008 ;  Russo, 2021 ). The shift that management has to go through is described by  Manz et. al. (1987)  as “leading others to lead (themselves)”. The authority to make work-related decisions shifts from external managers to the teams themselves. So rather than taking the lead, managers have to take a more supporting role and ask teams where they need their help. Second, management has to understand the point of Agile methodologies like Scrum and support teams by removing any obstacles they experience.

Click to enlarge

There are many other factors that can be considered. But the five processes we identified as characteristics of Agile teams provide a good, evidence-based starting point to make Agile teams more effective, and generate better business outcomes. Together with Prof. Daniel Russo We investigated a sample of 4.940 team members, aggregated into 1.978 Scrum teams, and found that these processes — or factors — together explain a very large amount of how effective Scrum teams (75.6%) are, and 34.9% of team morale and 57.9% of stakeholder satisfaction ( Verwijs & Russo, 2022 ).

What About Other Business Outcomes?

Obviously, team morale and stakeholder satisfaction are just two business outcomes for which economic arguments can be made. But more outcomes can be considered, like business longevity, the ability to deliver value within budget, and so on. We may cover these in future posts, as this one has already become way too long. And if happier team members and happier stakeholders aren’t already convincing enough, good results on those other outcomes aren’t probably going to change minds either :).

Implications For Practitioners

So what does all this mean in practice?

• An important lesson we’ve had to learn is that you can’t sell Agile or Scrum based on frameworks or ideals. Ultimately, the role of (top) management is to keep their business healthy and economically sustainable. Thus, the best way to convince them is to show how Scrum or Agile helps in that regard. This business case should provide some good talking points.
• Generally speaking, it is a good idea to track important business outcomes as metrics. For example; the number of sales, the number of unhappy customers, absenteeism, etc. This provides you with an opportunity to take an evidence-based approach to improvements. You can also measure such metrics alongside an ongoing Agile adoption, and see how Agile is improving certain metrics (or not).
• You can use the  Scrum Team Survey  to diagnose your Scrum or Agile team for free. We also give you tons of evidence-based feedback. The  DIY Workshop: Diagnose Your Scrum Teams With The Scrum Team Survey  is a great starting point.
• Our Do-It-Yourself Workshops are a great way to start improving without the need for external facilitators. The  DIY Workshop: Discover The Needs Of Your Stakeholders With UX Fishbowl  or  Experiment: Deepen Your Understanding Of Scrum With Real-Life Cases  are great starting points. The  DIY Workshop: Build Understanding Between Scrum Teams And Management  is also very useful if management support is the biggest issue. Find many more  here .
• We offer a number of physical kits that are designed to start conversations with and between teams and the larger organization. We have the  Scrum Team Starter Kit , the  Unleash Scrum In Your Organization Kit , and the  Zombie Scrum First Aid Kit . Each comes with creative exercises that we developed in our work with Scrum and Agile teams.

Our goal with this post was to make a stronger, evidence-based business case for Agile and Scrum. Taken together, we have strong evidence to support the belief that Agile teams deliver more value to their stakeholders than less Agile teams. They also have much higher team morale. Any company worth its salt would see the economic value in both of these outcomes. Happy stakeholders generate more revenue, spread positive word-of-mouth, and are more likely to stay. Similarly, happy team members are more productive and more likely to stay for the long term. If companies seriously invest in Agile, and in particular in the five factors we covered in this post, they are  very  likely to see better results.

Is this an indisputable fact? No. But the evidence to support it is very strong indeed, and growing every day.

This post took over 46 hours to research and write . Find more  evidence-based posts here .  We thank all the authors of the referenced papers and studies for their work.

Cardozo, E. S., Araújo Neto, J. B. F., Barza, A., França, A. C. C., & da Silva, F. Q. (2010, April). SCRUM and productivity in software projects: a systematic literature review. In  14th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering (EASE)  (pp. 1–4).

Chow, T., & Cao, D. B. (2008). A survey study of critical success factors in agile software projects.  Journal of systems and software ,  81 (6), 961–971.

Dönmez, D., & Grote, G. (2013, June). The practice of not knowing for sure: How agile teams manage uncertainties. In  International Conference on Agile Software Development  (pp. 61–75). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

Jørgensen, M. (2016). A survey on the characteristics of projects with success in delivering client benefits.  Information and Software Technology ,  78 , 83–94.

LePine, J. A., Erez, A., & Johnson, D. E. (2002). The nature and dimensionality of organizational citizenship behavior: a critical review and meta-analysis.  Journal of applied psychology ,  87 (1), 52.

Lee, G., & Xia, W. (2010). Toward agile: an integrated analysis of quantitative and qualitative field data on software development agility.  MIS quarterly ,  34 (1), 87–114.

Melo, C. D. O., Cruzes, D. S., Kon, F., & Conradi, R. (2013). Interpretative case studies on agile team productivity and management.  Information and Software Technology ,  55 (2), 412–427.

Moe, N. B., Dingsøyr, T., & Dybå, T. (2010). A teamwork model for understanding an agile team: A case study of a Scrum project.  Information and software technology ,  52 (5), 480–491.

Hacket, R. D. (1989). Work attitudes and employee absenteeism: A synthesis of the literature.  Journal of occupational psychology ,  62 (3), 235–248.

Hoda, R., & Noble, J. (2017, May). Becoming agile: a grounded theory of agile transitions in practice. In  2017 IEEE/ACM 39th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE)  (pp. 141–151). IEEE.

Hoda, R., Noble, J., & Marshall, S. (2011). The impact of inadequate customer collaboration on self-organizing Agile teams.  Information and software technology ,  53 (5), 521–534.

Judge, T. A., Thoresen, C. J., Bono, J. E., & Patton, G. K. (2001). The job satisfaction–job performance relationship: A qualitative and quantitative review.  Psychological bulletin ,  127 (3), 376.

Tripp, J., & Armstrong, D. J. (2018). Agile methodologies: organizational adoption motives, tailoring, and performance.  Journal of Computer Information Systems ,  58 (2), 170–179.

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Discover the Spotify model

What the most popular music technology company can teach us about scaling agile

Spotify is the largest and most popular audio streaming subscription service in the world, with an estimated 286 million users. A key part of Spotify's success is driven by the company’s unique approach to organizing around work to enhance team agility. As Spotify’s engineering teams traveled down the path towards improved agility, they documented their experience, shared it with the world, and ultimately influenced the way many technology companies organize around work. It is now known as the Spotify model.

What is the Spotify model?

The Spotify model is a people-driven, autonomous approach for scaling agile that emphasizes the importance of culture and network. It has helped Spotify and other organizations increase innovation and productivity by focusing on autonomy, communication, accountability, and quality.

The Spotify model isn’t a framework, as Spotify coach Henrik Kniberg noted , since it represents Spotify's view on scaling from both a technical and cultural perspective. It’s one example of organizing multiple teams in a product development organization and stresses the need for culture and networks.

…the Spotify model focuses on how we structure an organization to enable agility.

The Spotify model was first introduced to the world in 2012, when Henrik Kniberg and Anders Ivarsson published the whitepaper Scaling Agile @ Spotify , which introduced the radically simple way Spotify approached agility. Since then, the Spotify model generated a lot of buzz and became popular in the agile transformation space. Part of its appeal is that it focuses on organizing around work rather than following a specific set of practices. In traditional scaling frameworks, specific practices (e.g. daily standups) are how the framework is executed, whereas the Spotify model focuses on how businesses can structure an organization to enable agility.

The Spotify model champions team autonomy, so that each team (or Squad) selects their framework (e.g. Scrum , Kanban , Scrumban, etc.). Squads are organized into Tribes and Guilds to help keep people aligned and cross-pollinate knowledge.

Now, let’s demystify some of these terms…

Key elements of the Spotify model

The Spotify model is centered around simplicity. When Spotify began organizing around their work, they identified a handful of important elements on how people and teams should be structured.

Similar to a scrum team, Squads are cross-functional, autonomous teams (typically 6-12 individuals) that focus on one feature area. Each Squad has a unique mission that guides the work they do, an agile coach for support, and a product owner for guidance. Squads determine which agile methodology/framework will be used.

When multiple Squads coordinate within each other on the same feature area, they form a Tribe. Tribes help build alignment across Squads and typically consist of 40 - 150 people in order to maintain alignment (leveraging what we call Dunbar's Number ). Each Tribe has a Tribe Lead who is responsible for helping coordinate across Squads and for encouraging collaboration.

Even though Squads are autonomous, it’s important that specialists (e.g. Javascript Developer, DBAs) align on best practices. Chapters are the family that each specialist has, helping to keep engineering standards in place across a discipline. Chapters are typically led by a senior technology lead, who may also be the manager for the team members in that Chapter.

Team members who are passionate about a topic can form a Guild, which essentially is a community of interest. Anyone can join a Guild and they are completely voluntary. Whereas Chapters belong to a Tribe, Guilds can cross different Tribes. There is no formal leader of a Guild. Rather, someone raises their hand to be the Guild Coordinator and help bring people together.

The Trio (aka TPD Trio) is a combination of a Tribe Lead, product lead, and design lead. Each Tribe has a Trio in place to ensure there is continuous alignment between these three perspectives when working on features areas.

As organizations scale, sometimes multiple Tribes need to closely work together to accomplish a goal. Alliances are a combination of Tribe Trios (typically three or more) that work together to help their Tribes collaborate on a goal that is bigger than any one Tribe.

That’s it. There are not a lot of practices that need to be followed or ceremonies that need to happen. Squads may have ceremonies like sprint planning and retrospectives, but the focus of the Spotify model is on how teams organize around work. It’s up to Squads to figure out the best way to get the job done.

The benefits of the Spotify model

When Spotify changed the way they scaled agile they wanted to enable Squads to move fast, ship software quickly, and do so all with minimum pain and overhead. They realized these benefits and more as they took their model and evolved it. The organizational benefits of implementing the Spotify model include:

Less formal process and ceremony

The Spotify model focuses on organizing around work and not necessarily processes and ceremonies. This gives an organization greater flexibility when it comes to how Squads work. Instead of requiring Squads to change how they do their work (“you must do scrum”), it focuses on aligning them with each other and driving towards individual team outcomes.

More self-management and autonomy

The Spotify model encourages autonomy and creativity by trusting people to complete the work they are doing in the way they see fit. Do you need to ship software? That’s up to the Squad. Do you need to change direction? That’s also up to the Squad. The Spotify model focuses on decentralizing decision making and transferring that responsibility to Squads, Tribes, Chapters, and Guilds.

“Control leads to compliance;  autonomy  leads to engagement.”

- Dan Pink, Author, “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us”

The Spotify model can offer increased transparency across the work being done and grow a more experimentation-based approach to problem solving in a high trust environment. All this can lead to things like better products, happier customers, and more engaged employees. However, not everyone will experience these outcomes.

The challenges of the Spotify model

The Spotify model was based on one organization's way of working. Many organizations desire the same benefits of the Spotify model, so they attempt to emulate what Spotify did. Some organizations experienced more success than others, but it’s likely no organization experienced the same success as Spotify. The reason? Like any way of working, an organization's current culture and structure need to be taken into account. The model is simple, but the environment it's implemented in is complex.

Wise executives tailor their approach to fit the  complexity  of the circumstances they face.

- Dave Snowden, Management Consultant

Unfortunately, many organizations try to copy the Spotify model. To some, it may seem like a simple matrix organizational structure where people report to a functional area (Chapter), but work with a cross-functional team (Squad). However, it’s more complex than that. Although it may look like a matrix organization, the key cultural elements of the model need to be in place to allow the structure to thrive, such as trust and autonomy. If an organization doesn’t shift its behaviors (and ultimately its culture), the benefits of the Spotify model will never be realized. If you simply rename teams to Squads, you’re just putting lipstick on a pig.

Spotify model best practices

If you’re looking to enable a culture of trust, autonomy, and rapid learning, you can’t go wrong looking to the Spotify model for inspiration. If your organization is looking at the Spotify model as a means to help you approach agile at scale , the following is a list of best practices to keep in mind.

Don’t copy the model

Seek to understand the structure, practices, and mindset behind Spotify’s approach. With that understanding, tweak the aspects of the model to fit your own environment. Your goal is not to be Spotify, but to leverage their model to improve how your organization works together.

Autonomy and trust is key

Spotify gave as much autonomy as possible to their people in order to help them pivot quickly. Allowing teams to pick their own development tools and modify another team's code are just some examples. Within your organization, determine if there are decisions that can be pushed to the teams instead of being mandated by parts of the organization that are disconnected from the day-to-day work.

Transparency with community

Spotify’s success is credited to their focus on building community and transparency around their work. Establish your first Guild around the Spotify model adoption and encourage participation from everyone in the organization. Build trust by creating transparent, inclusive ways to gather feedback, and gain alignment on how your organization wants to work in the future.

Encourage mistakes

You will fall down and stumble in this journey. But that’s okay. Improvement involves experimenting and learning from both our successes and failures. Spotify went through many iterations before they attained the model we know today, and have since continued to experiment to constantly look for new ways to improve the way they work. Encourage the same within your organization!

If you focus on these practices you’ll see positive impacts on how your organization collaborates and aligns, whether or not you use the Spotify model as a guide.

In conclusion…

The Spotify model is a great source of inspiration if you’re looking to build an organization focused on moving quickly with autonomy and purpose. Even more formal scaling frameworks, such as Scrum@Scale , have gained inspiration from the model (and vice versa). It's important to remember that the Spotify model is not a destination. Ironically enough, Spotify doesn’t leverage the original implementation of the Spotify model anymore; they evolved and adapted the model to fit their changing organization. Trios and Alliances are actually newer elements in Spotify as they were brought about to solve new problems the organization faced as it grew larger. Starting with the key elements of the Spotify model can get you moving, but true agility comes with evolving the model to fit your context.

Taking the next step

Are you hungry to learn more about the Spotify model? Check the two-part video posted on Spotify Labs about the engineering culture at Spotify ( Part I and Part II ). You can also learn how the Spotify model compares with other scaling framework by visiting the agile at scale page on the Agile Coach.

If you’re looking to implement the Spotify model within your organization, it’s important to have the feedback mechanisms and transparency in place to generate and sustain a culture of trust and autonomy. Leveraging Atlassian’s Jira Align , organizations can organize Squads into Tribes, form Guilds and Chapters, and make product decisions transparent across the organization.

Mark Cruth is Atlassian’s resident Modern Work Expert. Focused on practice over theory, Mark spends his days coaching both Atlassian and customer teams on new ways of working, then sharing what he’s learned at events around the world.

Joining Atlassian in 2019, Mark brings over a decade of experience experimenting with work and helping people, teams, and organizations transform at places like Boeing, Nordstrom, TD Ameritrade, and Rocket Mortgage. Mark has made it his mission to inject modern ways of working, a transformation mindset, and the power of expert storytelling into everything he does.

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Sony and PRINCE2 Agile® Case Study

• Project management
• Project planning
• Project progress

June 26, 2017  |

  7  min read

This Case Study shows how Sony used PRINCE2 Agile® to manage the development and delivery of enhanced functionality for their file-based workflow programme. The driver behind the project was the need to be more responsive to customers’ demands.

As Sony was already a PRINCE2®-aligned organization and wanted to adopt a Scrum-based agile approach, PRINCE2 Agile was chosen as the project management method.

This case study is also available to read in Japanese (PDF, 754KB) .

Introduction

The organization.

Sony Corporation is a multinational organization with its headquarters in Japan. The business includes consumer and professional electronics, gaming, entertainment, and financial services and is one of the leading manufacturers of electronic products for the consumer and professional markets.

The Media Solutions Department is part of Sony Professional Solutions Europe and delivers broadcast equipment, software and media solutions into organizations across Europe. The Media Solutions Department has three key business areas:

• live production, incorporating studios, outside broadcast vehicles and production facilities
• news, covering newsroom editors, agency newswire systems and playout systems
• content management and archive solutions.

Summary of the project and its outcomes 

This Case Study shows how Sony used PRINCE2 Agile® to manage the development and delivery of enhanced functionality for their file-based work flow programme. The driver behind the project was the need to be more responsive to the Media Solutions Department’s customers’ demands.

The system was built around Sony’s Media Backbone Conductor and Navigator products. An infrastructure with base functionality was delivered in the early phases of the project and Sony wanted to continue the development of the product with enhanced features and services. They identified a requirement for a more flexible way of selecting the next features to be developed that would ensure that the needs were always assessed and prioritized.

What was the problem?

Keeping pace with change .

The initial phases of the project involved a long design period, followed by delivery and then deployment of the software. This was usually three to six months after the requirements had originally been agreed, during which time some had changed.

The need for process and technology transformation was driven by the need to realize the benefits of the true end-to-end file-based operation. It was very important to keep all stakeholders involved and part of the process. This included prioritizing features with the user community, measuring return on investment (ROI) and introducing changes in a controlled manner. Key to the success of this project has been the creation of a culture of continuous improvement.

It was essential to improve the sharing of content and automate some of the processes to free up valuable user time for core production activities.

The proposed solution 

As Sony had identified a need to be able to respond to user requirements faster, they decided to consider an agile-based methodology.

The solution had to ensure that:

• new developments are always relevant to the current business needs
• there is flexibility to reprioritize future software deliveries without the need to raise change requests and seek top management approvals.

Project Governance 

The project followed the PRINCE2 governance structure and had a project board with user, supplier and business representation, see Figure 2.1. The structure illustrates how local role names can be mapped onto the overall PRINCE2 governance framework, retaining customer/business supplier representation. For example, the Director of Technology effectively approved decisions around the backlog and was ultimately responsible for acceptance of the product.

Figure 2.1 Project governance structure

Communications, progress and issue reporting were strongly based on the management by exception principle and PRINCE2 reporting guidance. End stage and highlight reports were still used as communication channels between the project manager and the project board.

Aims and objectives

The major objective for the Media Solutions Department was to reduce project delivery time and reduce project risk by increasing product quality. The aims of this work were to create and adopt a workable agile approach under PRINCE2 and to prove it on a real project.

Sony already had PRINCE2 elements in place and delivery teams familiar with agile development. The approach was to combine the two, using the PRINCE2 Agile approach, to make sure that the strengths of PRINCE2 were not lost in using agile: in particular, the governance, communication and quality management aspects.

The adoption of a PRINCE2 Agile approach has been phased into the organization, partly through training and partly through adoption and implementation of the method.

We started by involving the delivery project managers, but then realized that all the stakeholders across the business needed to be engaged to achieve the desired improvements and flexibility in delivery.

The approach required more user involvement during development than the previous development method, but provided better business value because the solutions solved the business problems of the user stakeholders. Frequent demos took place involving the user stakeholders which encouraged discussion of the product features during development. The user acceptance process was much easier than in previous projects as the users were already familiar with the products and had been involved in their evolution through the project.

The development team used automated tools to support agile activities such as backlog management (Figure 4.1), progress tracking (Figure 4.2, sprint report) and Kanban boards (Figure 4.3).

Figure 4.1 Backlog velocity chart

Figure 4.2 Sprint report

Figure 4.3 Kanban board

The project used the PRINCE2 Agile guidance about contracts to help build agreements with their clients based on throughputs rather than end products alone. Traditional fixed price and scope or time and materials contracts were not suitable, so a new model based on throughput of functionality was established. Developer estimates based on planning poker sessions fed directly into this mechanism, and the customer was directly involved in the sessions to ensure confidence and integrity in the process.

Sony has been a PRINCE2-aligned organization for some time and is used to delivering predominately hardware/software application solutions in a traditional design, build, and commission approach.

We quickly realized the limitations of this process, as our software offerings became more customizable and projects started to exceed a three to six month turnaround. Therefore we needed to look at:

• the end-to-end lifecycle
• how we identify agile-based opportunities, and when agile might not be applicable
• contracts for agile projects
• manage the sprints of specification and delivery
• supporting a continuously evolving live environment through new services, changes in workflows, partners or integrated systems.

One of the key challenges was setting up a commercial and legal framework which supported the scope not being fixed until the start of each sprint, and without the overhead of using the existing change control process. This was addressed by using an agile approach to building agreements based on throughputs.

What was the biggest success factor?

From a Sony prospective, PRINCE2 Agile has enabled us to better manage the changes delivered to the users. The methodology has allowed us to reduce the overheads of change requests/impact assessments and to focus on delivering exactly what is needed and ultimately supporting the acceptance of the delivery and faster release back into the operation.

Benefits already realized

The project has already resulted in reduced delivery costs because of:

• less upfront design
• simpler contracting of projects
• shorter time to completion, roll out
• minimized rework
• reduced administration through the use of automation tools.

All of which have contributed to increased customer satisfaction because of:

• better customer engagement during the project
• better alignment to business needs
• more of the required features being delivered.

Lessons learned

1. Initially we took the decision that going agile would be mainly for project managers involved in product delivery and our in-house development teams. This proved to be far from reality. It is key to involve everyone from account management and sales, bid teams, architects, support, legal and procurement teams, so that the entire lifecycle can be assessed.

2. All parts of the organization need to understand the agile approach, not just the delivery project managers.

3. Sales and bid managers, support managers and engineers, need to agree on how to sell the approach and then support the solution as more features are being developed.

Axelos’ view

Combining the governance strengths of PRINCE2 with the flexibility of agile delivery was the driving force behind AXELOS’ development of PRINCE2 Agile. The Sony experience is a very good example of how the benefits of both PRINCE2 and agile can be brought together to provide a delivery solution that matches the project environment.

As experienced PRINCE2 users, Sony recognize the need for good project governance and have retained the strengths of PRINCE2’s controls but adapted for agile working. Agile was identified as the appropriate delivery approach to improve delivery times and engage with users. The synthesis PRINCE2 and agile has provided a delivery approach that is already realizing benefits.

About the author

Yucel Timur is Head of Project Management for Sony Professional Solutions Europe, with over 15 years’ project delivery experience in the Broadcast and Media Industry. Yucel has built a Project Management group that is delivering a variety of complex projects across Europe. As Sony’s solutions have become more customizable, the Project Management group continues to adapt processes, techniques and skills to improve project delivery and quality. This supports Sony with the objective of always being at the forefront of delivering solutions into the broadcast industry and is leading the way in providing feature rich tools and applications to customers across the globe.

For more information, visit pro.sony.eu

Camilla Brown has 15 years’ experience in software product development and solution delivery in the broadcast and media industry. During the last few years, Camilla has ventured into the world of project management while still holding on to agile software development processes, bringing change to the way Sony delivers some of its professional solutions.

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Organizational issues in embracing Agile methods: an empirical assessment

• Original article
• Open access
• Published: 11 October 2021
• Volume 12 , pages 1420–1433, ( 2021 )

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• Alok Mishra   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1275-2050 1 ,
• Samia Abdalhamid 2 ,
• Deepti Mishra 3 &
• Sofiya Ostrovska 4  

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This study provides empirical evidence to the body of knowledge in Agile methods adoption in small, medium and large organizations in international context. This research explores the factors involved in the adoption of Agile methods in software development organizations. A survey was conducted among Agile professionals to gather survey data from 52 software organizations in seven countries across the world. Statistical techniques are applied towards empirical assessment. Organizational culture, team structure and management support are found to be crucial success factors whereas lack of management support, a large organization size and traditional organizational culture are found to be detrimental for the adoption of Agile approach in an organization. The selection of an appropriate Agile method depends on the project size and, for each size, there are specific methods preferred by different enterprises. Providing better control over the work is viewed as the primary advantage of the Agile methods within large and small organizations, while for the medium-size organizations, the priority is switched to coping with changing user requirements. Majority of the respondents did not consider embracing agile methods as a reason for project failure which indicates that Agile methods are, indeed, beneficial.

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1 Introduction

The Agile Software Development paradigm has become increasingly popular in the last few years, since it claims lower costs, better productivity, better quality, and better business satisfaction (Mishra et al. 2012 ). The acceptance of Agile is often in response to the perceived failure of the traditional approach, usually in relation to the quality of software development, its slow speed of delivery, its difficulty in handling changing contexts and requirements, and its ineffective engagement of business stakeholders (Russo et al. 2013 ). The benefits of Agile adoption, such as flexibility and short delivery times, have led many large organizations to adopt Agile at scale (Dikert et al. 2016 ; Paasivaara et al. 2018 ).

Management support is one of the success factors in large scale Agile transformation in organizations (Karvonen et al. 2018 ). Hoda et al. ( 2011 ) found that it is essential for self-organizing agile teams to establish and flourish by senior management support, in terms of providing freedom and establishing an organizational culture of trust. Organizational support consists of strategy, structure, culture, environment, top management, and leadership support. Additionally, communication flow and channels, integration among teams and projects, and deeper agile adoption is also part of it (Kuusinen et al. 2017 ). In terms of team structures, agile roles and empowerment of teams, cross-functional longer-lived team structures were considered as a potential outcome, along with Agile methods such as AgilePM, Scrum, Kanban and Scrumban outline guidelines (Karvonen et al. 2018 ). They further argued the most acute problems were related to which agile method to adopt, how to form teams, how to redefine old roles and define new roles and how to ensure empowerment of teams. A prevailing hierarchical culture also caused challenges to enable empowerment of people and teams. Recently Šmite et al. ( 2020 ) confirm in their study that organizational and national cultural barriers may inhibit collaboration in general and acceptance of agile ways of working in particular.

Few studies have been conducted related with the adoption of Agile methods. See, for example, Chow and Cao ( 2008 ) and Kumar and Goel ( 2012 ). Nuottila et al. ( 2016 ) also supported that there are only a few studies discussing agile adoption in public sector organizations. Recently Wadood et al. ( 2020 ) also recognized that Agile methodologies transformation from traditional software development methods for market-driven software development is successfully evidenced in private sector; whereas, its potential benefits in the public sector are still unknown. Abdalhamid and Mishra ( 2017 ) presented success and failure factors that affect the process of agile methods adoption in software development organizations. Conforto et al. ( 2014 ) recommended for further research on use of agile practices and project management in software and other industries. As a result, there is not enough research focused at embracing Agile in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in comparison with large enterprises. There is still paucity of research in this area and, as such, the present work aims to fill this gap, as well as to explore the combination of Agile approaches with traditional methods in SMEs and selection of specific methods of Agile for different types of projects. It will also be examined if adopting Agile in large projects is the reason for the project to succeed or fail. The findings of this paper provide new insight on Agile methods adoption in software development within various organizations in seven countries.

The remainder of the paper is structured as follows: Sect.  2 presents related work with study. Section  3 presents research methodology. Section  4 presents data analysis and results. Section  5 discusses the study results. Finally, Sect.  6 provides a conclusion and future research directions.

2 Literature review

Evidently, nowadays organizations are tested by fast-changing and constantly improving business surroundings and fully-experienced clients with continually rising anticipations so as to reduce the time and obtain the best possible services (Cooke 2014 ). During the development of any software, there are always certain challenges to be faced due to uncertainty. This is because from the beginning of the developing venture, it is hard to tell if a project’s requirements were identified in the right way (Abdalhamid and Mishra 2017 ). There is also a possibility that the requirements change during the process of development. Such problems can be solved by using Agile development methods, and one of the reasons that force many companies to announce an adoption of Agile methodologies is that the specialists related to Agile made strong and compelling claims with regards to the benefits of using Agile (Thakur and Kaur 2013 ). For quite some time, organizations have been progressively deploying Agile methods in their product development ventures. It was found in a survey that 41% of software development projects have adopted one of the Agile methods, and that such techniques are being used in 65% of those projects (Ambler 2006 ).

2.1 Agile methods in SME

It is commonly known that software is an indispensable part of everyday life, and in proceeding with the development of better software, new organizations in industry (small- and medium-size) have appeared over the past decade. The quick pace with which such organizations are established makes them face a few downsides, for example, casualness in the product improvement procedure and technological insufficiencies. Software development organizations are beginning to realize the significance of adapting software development methods according to project conditions (Mishra et al. 2018 ) and found in Agile methods a conceivable answer for developing their practices and procedures (Escobar-Sarmiento and Linares-Vásquez 2012 ). Small- and medium-size software development companies are shifting to Agile methods in light of the fact that these approaches are beneficial for small groups without complex organizational structures (Escobar-Sarmiento and Linares-Vásquez 2012 ). The Agile programming advancement strategies have been considered as an extreme-quality new model for product improvement, with small work groups without order or bureaucracy (Dyba and Dingsoyr 2009 ; Nerur et al. 2005 ).

2.2 Agile methods in large projects and organizations

The fact is that Agile methods were initially intended for use in small, single-group projects (Boehm and Turner 2005 ). Nonetheless, their actual and potential advantages have made them applicable both for larger projects and in bigger organizations (Dikert et al. 2016 ). Many large organizations are embracing agile software development as part of their continuous effort towards higher flexibility and shorter lead times (Paasivaara et al. 2018 ). However, the pertinence of Agile approaches to large organizations is frequently regarded as challenging (Simons 2002 ). The fundamental acceptance of agile development are challenged when applying the methods at a very large scale (Dingsøyr et al. 2018 ).

Agile approaches are also effective in other situations, where large and complicated software items frequently require orderly training with the required extra procedure to guarantee achievement. In very large-scale projects, this matter becomes even more so as the complication of the application space is frequently beyond the experience or expertise of certain clients, not to mention the developers. For this reason, there is an evident requirement for continued client engagement in large-scale complex projects as the main key for XP project achievement (Cao et al. 2004 ).

2.3 Organizational factors important for agile adoption and agile benefits

Recently Gupta et al. ( 2019 ) examined the impact of the different forms of organizational culture on success of using agile software development practices. Iivari and Iivari ( 2011 ) also analyzed the relationship between organizational culture and post-adoption deployment of agile methods and concluded the relationship between organizational culture and the deployment of agile systems development forms a rich and interesting research topic. They suggested further research in this regard. The adoption of agile development has reported some challenges in agile adoption such as slow participant buy-in, opposition to pair-programming, lack of detailed cost evaluation, scope creep, reduced focus on code base’s technical infrastructure and maintainability, difficulty evaluating and rewarding individual performance, and the need for significant on-site customer involvement, management support, competent managers and developers, and extensive training (Vijayasarathy and Turk 2008 ).

Practitioners frequently observed in surveys that Agile methods provide many benefits including better communication and coordination, improved quality, greater productivity, and higher morale (Tolfo et al. 2011 ; Van Oyen et al. 2001 ; Versionone 2008 ). A study at Microsoft also revealed that similar benefits were realized by the users of agile development approaches (Begel and Nagappan 2007 ).

3 Research methodology

The aim of this research is to examine the use of Agile approaches in general in addition to the use of Agile methods in small- and medium-scale software development organizations and the factors that influence the decision to choose one method over the others for a particular project. In addition to answering other research questions, this work is also focused on identifying organizational factors that can help the adoption of Agile methods easier and more productive. However, to define the research hypotheses of success factors, certain related attributes are needed to delineate the general view of success for a specific venture. In this respect, Cohn and Ford ( 2003 ) and Lindvall et al. ( 2004 ) recommend these criteria: quality (i.e., providing a working item), scope (meeting all prerequisites set by the client), timeliness, and cost. In addition, Misra et al. ( 2009 ) identified decreased delivery agenda and increased return on investment (ROI) as success attributes, adding that output, functionality and client satisfaction can also be seen as quality criteria. Considering the above mentioned studies, the research model related with organizationsal success factors are shown in Fig.  1 followed by the related hypothesis.

Research model of organizational success factors

In terms of success factors, the relationship between success factors and success attributes is positive, meaning that when the independent variable X i (success factors) increases, the dependent variable Y i (success attributes) increases, and vice versa.

H1: The culture of organizations (OC) has a significant impact on the adoption of agile approach in terms of BC, CR, IQ, EE, CS, DS, RI.

H2: Team structure (TS) has a significant impact on the adoption of agile approach in terms of BC, CR, IQ, EE, CS, DS, RI.

H3: Management support (MS) has a significant impact on the adoption of agile approach in terms of BC, CR, IQ, EE, CS, DS, RI.

H4: Team organization (TO) has a significant impact on the adoption of agile approach in terms of BC, CR, IQ, EE, CS, DS, RI.

H5: Maintaining agility (MA) has a significant impact on the adoption of agile approach in terms of BC, CR, IQ, EE, CS, DS, RI.

H6: Universal acceptance of agile methods (UA) has a significant impact on the adoption of agile approach in terms of BC, CR, IQ, EE, CS, DS, RI.

In terms of failure factors, the relationship between failure factors and success attributes is negative because when the independent variable X i (failure factors) increases, the dependent variable Y i (success attributes) decreases, and vice versa. The research model is shown in Fig.  2 followed by related hypotheses.

Research model of organizational failure factors

H7: The absence of management support (MS) has a significant impact on on the adoption of agile approach in terms of BC, CR, IQ, EE, CS, DS, RI.

H8: Bigger organization size (OS) has a significant impact on the adoption of agile approach in terms of BC, CR, IQ, EE, CS, DS, RI.

H9: Organizational culture (OC) has a significant impact on the adoption of agile approach in terms of BC, CR, IQ, EE, CS, DS, RI.

4 Data analysis and results

The Google form was employed to gather the data. The target audience are individuals from companies that have adopted Agile. The questionnaire was filled by 52 software development companies from 7 different countries, but most of the responses are from Turkey (30), followed by India, Brazil, and Malta as 8, 7, and 4, respectively. Also, Finland, Saudi Arabia, and U.A.E. are represented by 1 company from each country.

As the purpose of this research is to explore the adoption of Agile methods in SMEs, most of the responses were collected from companies of such size, namely 24 small companies (less than 20 staff members) and 11 medium companies (comprising 20 to 200 staff members). For the comparison of the outcomes, responses were also collected from 17 large companies having more than 200 staff members.

To analyze the data, a statistical approach is adopted and, for this purpose, the IBM SPSS version 20 program is used. There are four different sections regarding the survey data, namely: the background information about the companies and the respondents who participated in the survey, the characteristics of the projects using Agile methods, organizational factors affecting the success of agile projects and finally the data on the Agile acceptance along with the comments provided by the respondents concerning the various aspects of the usage of Agile methods.

This section may be divided by subheadings. It should provide a concise and precise description of the experimental results, their interpretation as well as the experimental conclusions that can be drawn.

4.1 Reliability and validity test

Since this study is of exploratory nature, there is a need for a reliability analysis, for which purpose the Cronbach’s alpha is used as it is the most well-known and efficient technique today to calculate inner consistency reliability (Rubin and Babbie 1997 ). Higher estimations of Cronbach's alpha respectively demonstrate more noteworthy consistency in variance of the specimen test scores when the value exceeds 0.7 as the standard in a survey study.

Cronbach’s alpha for a set of test scores in this research yield 0.8 for the failure factors and acceptance of Agile, while for success factors this value stands at 0.9. According to these results, there is an indication of clear accuracy of the statistical deductions from the information; that is, there are no issues with the inner consistency reliability tests.

4.2 Background information

4.2.1 respondents’ profile.

This section presents the profile of respondents according to their positions in the companies. Table 1 shows the break-down.

4.2.2 Experience levels

In terms of years of experience in Agile development, differences can be observed from organization to organization; nevertheless, the highest number stands at 17 years of experience, while the lowest is one year. Most organizations have 3 to 10 years of experience in Agile development. The details are displayed in Table 2 .

4.2.3 Level of projects complexity

Most companies—32 out of 52 develop their projects at a medium level of complexity, while the other 20 dealt with projects of high levels of complexity. None of the companies dealt with projects of low complexity.

4.2.4 Number of Agile projects

The number of the projects which used Agile methods ranges in the companies under study from 1 to 30. One of the companies developed thirty projects using Agile and 8 companies developed at least 10 projects in this way. The modal value is 4 with the frequency 10. More details are provided in the Table 3 below.

4.2.5 Types of systems developed

There are many types of systems that can be developed using Agile methods. Generally, companies develop more than two types of systems, where the majority of developed system are of the Windows-based followed by business systems. Embedded systems and safety–critical systems present the least popular ones as shown in Fig.  3 .

Type of systems developed

4.2.6 Companies’ CMMI certification and CMMI level

The study reveals the majority of firms that responded to the survey were not CMMI-certified. To be specific, only 17 out of 52 have CMMI certification. To be more specific, 12 companies have the certificate of Level 3: Defined, 3 companies have certificate of Level 5: Optimizing, and two have either Level 2: Managed or Level 4: Quantitatively Managed. In addition, the responses reveal than none of the companies have any other software process assessment and improvement certifications such as ISO/IEC 15504.

4.3 Preferred Agile practices and methods in different projects

This section aims to ascertain which methods were used more in small, medium, and large projects. In essence, the question is whether project characteristics can determine which methods are to be used.

4.3.1 Agile methods’ joint application

By far, the majority of the responding firms—that is, 56%—used Agile methods along with other structured methods. Only 36% of firms used Agile methods solely, and finally the lowest percentage is pertinent to those who used Agile rarely (8%).

Since most companies use Agile along with one or more traditional software development methods, it is essential to determine these methods. The results show that most of the companies use the Waterfall model while the Spiral method is the least used one. The relevant data are summarized in Table 4 .

4.3.2 Agile practices in companies

There are many practices of Agile and organizations use most of them, but some of them are more favoured, namely Scrum daily meetings, small release cycles, continuous integration, code and design reviews, use of design patterns, and code standard. See Fig.  4 for the details.

Agile Practices in Companies

4.3.3 Preferred Agile methods

There are many methods under the umbrella of Agile, and, in general, most companies used more than one of them. Our goal was to identifying the most preferred ones. The summary of the responses appear in Fig.  5 , reveals that Scrum is the prevailing one, followed by the Extreme Programming (XP). The Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM) and Crystal have the lowest percentages.

Popular Agile methods

4.3.4 Preferred Agile methods in projects of different sizes

It was probed which Agile methods are preferred in small projects. According to the results, the situation is resembling the one described in the preceding section. More precisely, Scrum and XP are the most commonly used in this respect, while the Crystal and the Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM) represent the lowest percentages. All details are exhibited in Fig.  6 .

Preferred Agile methods in small projects

The situation is somewhat different for medium sized projects. Although most agreed that the Scrum method is the most preferred one to develop medium projects followed by the Lean and Kanban methods. Some expressed other insights, indicating the Crystal method as effective in developing medium-sized projects, but this presents only small percentage and, hence, is among the lowest ones as shown in Fig.  7 .

Preferred Agile methods in medium-sized projects

In terms of large projects, most of the participants reported to be the Scrum, followed this time by the Feature-Driven Development and the XP. We refer to Fig.  8 .

Preferred Agile methods in large projects

4.4 Organizational success and failure factors

4.4.1 organizational factors with positive impact on the adoption of agile approach.

The Pearson correlation coefficient r ij , is computed with the help of the SPSS software for each organizational factor X i and each quality attribute Y j . It is well-known that uncorrelatedness of random variables is less restrictive condition than their independence. Nevertheless, a non-zero correlation coefficient indicates relationship between variables. In essence, this coefficient describes how close a relationship exists between the variables to a linear one, while the sign of r demonstrates whether the relationship is positive (r > 0) or negative (r < 0). After a correlation coefficient is calculated, each r ij is tested as to whether it provides a significant relationship at the level of significance α = 0.05 and if X i is a significant explanatory variable for Y j . This is done by using the hypotheses of the form:

H 0 : r ij  = 0 (X i is not a significant explanatory variable for Y j ).

H 1 : r ij  ≠ 0 (X i is a significant explanatory variable for Y j ).

The test is a two-tailed t-test, with t (n − 2) = t (50) distribution and the t-statistic

From the observed value of the test statistic, the P -value is obtained and the null hypothesis is rejected if and only if P  < 0.05. The following Table 5 shows which of the correlation coefficients appear to be significant (in bold). It can be observed that organizational culture, team structure and management support are crucial success organizational factors that have significant impact on the adoption of agile approach in terms of CR, IQ, CS, RI.

4.4.2 Organizational factors negatively affecting the adoption of agile approach

The Pearson correlation coefficient r ij and P -value for each organizational factor X i and each quality attribute Y j is calculated as described in preceding Sect.  4.4.1 . The following Table 6 shows which of the correlation coefficients appear to be significant (in bold). It can be observed that absence of management support, large organizational size and traditional culture in organizations have significant negative impact on the adoption of agile approach in terms of BC, CR, EE.

4.5 Acceptance of Agile methods

4.5.1 role of agile methods in project failure.

Agile methods are being used to develop various projects, but adoption of these methods may cause obstacles if the nature of the project is not well suited for the Agile development or if there is not enough skills/culture to support Agile development. The participants were asked about this issue. However, the outcomes of the questionnaire demonstrate convincingly that the adoption of Agile methods is not considered as a reason for project’s failure by 76.9% of respondents, and only 23.1% think otherwise. This indicates that adopting Agile methods was, indeed, beneficial and not the other way.

4.5.2 The benefits of Agile methods

The purpose of this research question is to indicate the main benefits gained by adopting Agile methods. Specifically, the following nine characteristics are selected for consideration:

The use of Agile provides better control over the work.

Using Agile methods allows to finish the tasks quickly.

Agile methods are used because they cope with changing user requirements in a better way.

Agile adoption allows to achieve better quality.

Agile methods are selected because of the type of the project.

Agile is used because it helps in effort estimation (cost, schedule).

Agile methods are used because they help to provide customer satisfaction.

Using Agile methods help to reduce the delivery schedules.

The Agile methods are used in order to increase the return on investment.

Furthermore, the size-related aspects (large, medium, and small) of companies are analyzed separately. The responses to the questionnaire are summarized in Table 7 . To compare the realization of each statement after incorporation of Agile methods, the weighted Borda count is used where the score of each benefit is calculated as follows:

where S is the number of “Strongly Agree” responses, A is the number of “Agree” responses, and N stands for the number of “Neutral” responses. In the case when the score values are equal, the numbers of the “Strongly agree” replies are compared to determine the preference.

Based on the aforementioned calculations, the following conclusions are reached:

The main benefit obtained by using Agile methods is 1: “Agile provides better control over the work” (score: 117). The next ones—rather close to each other in the opinion of the respondents—are 3 (“Agile methods cope with changing user requirements in a better way”) (score: 111) and 2 (“Using Agile allows to finish the tasks quickly”) (score: 110). If we compare these outcomes with the data of the companies with different sizes, we observe that 1 is still viewed as the primary advantage of the Agile methods within large and small companies, while for the medium-size companies, the priority is switched to 3, and 1 comes at the 4-th place.

The importance of benefit 3 is indicated as the major one by the employees of medium companies, while mentioned as 3-rd and 4-th by large and small companies, respectively. The role of Agile methods in achieving characteristic 2 was considered to be the third important one, and also it was determined as the 2-nd for large and medium companies, and the 3-rd for small ones. As a conclusion, in the evaluation of the benefits coming from adopting Agile methods, the priorities are:

Along with finding the benefits gained mostly from the use of Agile methods, it is also determined which of them can be considered as receiving the weakest effect from the adoption of those methods. The data supplied in Table 7 shows that the quality which gains the least is 6 (“Agile is used because it helps in effort estimation—cost, schedule”) (score: 91), which remains also true for SMEs, whereas large companies mention 7 (“Agile methods are used because they help to provide customer satisfaction”) as such attribute. The impact of attributes 5 (“Agile methods are selected because of the type of the project”) (score: 92) and 4 (“Agile adoption allows to achieve better quality”) (score: 95) are listed as the 2-nd and 3-rd least important ones. It has to be pointed out that, according to this questionnaire, the Agile is not used mainly to achieve better quality. To summarize, the least important reasons to adopt Agile can be listed as follows:

4.5.3 Reasons for not adopting Agile methods

As shown in Table 3 , most companies used Agile methods in more than 3 projects. Nevertheless, there were 4 respondents who stated that they were not going to use Agile anymore. The following arguments have been presented by each one on the matter:

In our organization, any kind of change meets with resistance;

Some projects are very big and possess well-defined requirements;

The projects we are carrying out not suitable for Agile methods;

We do not have enough experience and skills in Agile.

5 Discussion

This study explores the factors involved in the adoption of Agile methods in SMEs. In all, 52 respondents participated from around the world, including 35 belonging to SMEs and the rest to large enterprises. Descriptive statistics is used to analyze the data from seven different countries based on their years of experiences and number of projects developed using Agile and majority of these are SMEs. These were the expected results since Agile methods are initially intended for use in small, single-group projects and are, as a result, popular in SMEs (Boehm and Turner 2005 ). Most of the small and medium companies developed projects with medium levels of complexity that do not require much time and large number of people. Meanwhile, medium and large companies have some projects of high levels of complexity.

5.1 Preferred Agile methods in different projects

This study identified that primarily, companies use Agile methods along with other structured methods because both can co-exist, thus constituting the greater part of practically utilized hybrid approaches (Kuhrmann and Fernández 2015 ; Kuhrmann et al. 2014 ). In terms of the methods used alongside Agile, the Waterfall model tops the list. It is observed that a mix of the Waterfall/XP, and Scrum/XP are the most widely embraced combinations (Solinski and Petersen 2016 ), and this was supported by the responses to the present research (see Sect.  4.3.1 ). The second method used together with Agile is Prototyping, which is the best choice to combine with Agile when the customer cannot participate in developing the project. Solinski and Petersen ( 2016 ) discovered that Scrum and XP are the most well-known endorsed methods, and this was also reiterated by the responses in the present research in Sect.  4.3.3 . To elaborate more, it is observed which methods are more effective with small, medium, or large projects. Specifically, the XP and Scrum are more effective with small projects, Scrum and the Lean and Kanban methods with medium size projects, and, finally, the Scrum and Feature-Driven Development are considered most effective in large projects. This is also supported by Heikkilä et al. ( 2017 ) that in large scale agile development combining agile methods with a flexible feature development process can bring many benefits. Recently Küpper et al. ( 2019 ) also observed that in seven Estonian companies, five reported using practices and other elements of Scrum. Five companies mentioned use of practices and other elements of Kanban.

5.2 Organizational factors conducive for Agile adoption

Organizational culture has been found to have significant impact on the adoption of agile methods (see Sect.  4.4.1 ). As agile methods are essentially focused on human aspects, their application in organizations depends mostly on their adequacy to the current organizational culture (Tolfo et al. 2011 ). They also suggested that the analysis of the levels of organizational culture improves the understanding of how an agile culture should be established. Nerur et al. ( 2005 ) also stressed organizational culture has a significant impact on agile methods implementation in an organization as culture exerts considerable influence on decision-making processes, problem-solving strategies, innovative practices, information filtering, social negotiations, relationships, and planning and control mechanisms.

The results indicate that management support is a crucial success factor (Sect.  4.4.1 .) in the adoption of agile methods. This result is aligned with multiple studies. Asnawi et al. ( 2011 ) noted that it is significant to have management support in the transition to the usage of agile methods. Pikkarainen et al. ( 2012 ) reported the significance of management providing the crucial goals and support for agile development. Management requires to support the changes needed in the software-development-related processes in order to optimize processes for agile methods (Boehm and Turner 2005 ). Management support is an absolute necessity and adopting agile, or implementing any significant change, requires an executive’s sincere support (Dikert et al. 2016 ). For Agile Methods, this is particularly challenging, as executive managers are risk and opportunity focuse—reluctant to induce risk without visibility (Coram and Bohner 2005 ).

Team structure is an important factor to achieve success in the adoption of agile methods as established in the present study (Sect.  4.4.1 ). In agile teams, team members, empowered with more discretionary and decision-making powers, are not confined to a specialized role. This increases the variation of the teams and empowers them to self-organize and counter with eagerness to coming scenarios (Nerur et al. 2005 ).

5.3 Organizational challenges in Agile adoption

The present study identifies that absence of suitable organizational culture can hinder the adoption of agile methods in an organization (Sect.  4.4.2 ). Nerur et al. ( 2005 ) concluded organizational forms and cultures helpful to innovation may adopt agile methods more easily than those built around bureaucracy and formalization. Agile transition is not an easy process as Gandomani and Nafchi ( 2016 ) observed in their study and challenges sometimes arise from organizational culture rather than people’s culture. In this case, focusing on organizational behaviors and improving them would be the only solution.

Further, the absence of management support can have adverse effects on agile adoption as reported in this work (Sect.  4.4.2 ). Vijayasarathy and Turk ( 2008 ) also identified management support as one of the challenges in the adoption of agile methods.

This study also found that large organizational size can negatively impact the adoption of agile methods (Sect.  4.4.2 ). There are many challenging issues related to development processes which are well-defined and essential in large organizations and might conflict with agile practices (Nuottila et al. 2016 ). Agile practices encourage self-disciplined decision making, feature development, integration on a team level while in large organizations mostly there are change control boards for system or architectural changes (Bowers et al. 2002 ; Lindvall et al. 2004 ). Agile methods promote self-driven, self-disciplined teams to plan testing, test-cases and quality control, but in large enterprises test case verification and quality reviews are often centralized controlled (Abrahamsson et al. 2009 ; Boehm and Turner 2005 ; Bowers et al. 2002 ; Cao et al. 2009 ; Lindvall et al. 2004 ). Further, agile methods suggest developers or team can integrate new software frequently into software architecture baseline but specifically in larger systems this is controlled and monitored because there is centralized architectural control over software development (Bowers et al. 2002 ; Lindvall et al. 2004 ).

5.4 Agile adoption as a potential reason for project failure

Majority of the respondents did not consider the adoption of agile methods as a reason for project’s failure (Sect.  4.5.1 ). This indicates that adopting Agile methods was, indeed, beneficial and not the other way. As most of the respondents are from small and medium enterprises, other studies also supported it (Asnawi et al. 2011 ; Boehm and Turner 2005 ; Cockburn and Highsmith 2001 ). Asnawi et al. ( 2011 ) observed researchers suggest two reasons in this regard: SMEs have more dynamic culture which is normally better suited to flexible and agile practices and secondly these companies do not have legacies to follow, and also not established formal and rigorous processes (Asnawi et al. 2011 ; Cockburn and Highsmith 2001 ). Nuottila et al. ( 2016 ) in their study in a public sector organization agile adoption (Scrum) on a complex system in a dynamic environment (not a large software development) found successful and observed remarkable improvements in efficiency of software development process compared to the traditional methods.

5.5 The Benefits of Agile Methods

The results show that software development companies adopt Agile approaches because of their various benefits, which include better control over the work, cope with changing user requirements in a better way, and finishing the tasks quickly (Sect.  4.5.2 ). In addition, when comparing these outcomes with the data from companies of different size, one can observe that providing better control over the work is still viewed as the primary advantage of the Agile methods within large and small companies, while for the medium-size companies, the priority is switched to coping with changing user requirements (Sect.  4.5.2 ). This is a new observation, which has not appeared in the available literature.

Some of the results here are aligned with previous studies. Agile provides better control over the work (Sect.  4.5.2 ) due to the fact that developers are allowed to make decisions without having to go through a bureaucratic approval process (Highsmith and Highsmith 2002 ). There is not a strict hierarchy or chain of command as agile leaders act more like coaches facilitating the software development process (Chin 2004 ; Cockburn and Highsmith 2001 ). Agile methods cope with changing user requirements in a better way (Sect.  4.5.2 ). Agile methods ensures that changing user requirements and changes are continually accommodated (Bonner et al. 2010 ). This is achieved through an iterative, incremental development process that involves active commitment from clients (Cockburn 2001 ; Highsmith 2009 ; Martin 2002 ) since feedback and communication are key elements of an evolutionary development process (Boehm and Turner 2005 ; Highsmith 2009 ; Highsmith and Highsmith 2002 ). Finishing the tasks quickly is one of the benefits established here (Sect.  4.5.2 ) and also mentioned in other studies as Agile development has a tendency to concentrate on the right-on-time and quick properties of the methods applied (Cockburn 2001 ).

6 Conclusion, limitations and future work

Applying quantitative methods, this study used survey data to examine embracing of Agile methods in SMEs working on software development, to find out which Agile methods are used in large projects to determine whether the choice of a specific method is affected by the size of the project; to enquire which other methods are used along with Agile; and finally, to establish what critical success and failure factors exist in Agile software development projects. The data gathered from 52 Agile software development companies from different-size organizations and geographic locations provided sufficient data for statistical analysis to address core issues and arrive at conclusions.

The Agile methods dominating large and complex projects are Scrum, the Feature-Driven Development, Lean and Kanban, and XP. The selection of an appropriate Agile method depends on the project size and, for each size, there are specific methods preferred by different enterprises (See Sect.  4.3.4 ). The results show that most companies prefer to adopt Agile methods in combination with other methods, and that these methods are mainly Waterfall and Prototyping. Software development companies adopt the Agile approach because of its advantages, mainly that the results present better control over the work. Other benefits are of different importance for companies of different size. We refer to Sect.  4.5.2 . After examining the influence of various factors crucial for achieving success while adopting Agile methods, the following three organizational factors for Agile software development ventures were identified: organizational culture, team structure and management support. In terms of failure factors, absence of management support, a large organization size and traditional organizational culture can negatively impact the adoption of agile approach.

Despite the fact that this research achieved its objectives, there are still certain unavoidable restrictions that should be taken into account. To begin with, this study is constrained by the presumption that the information acquired across various work functions are equally critical. It would have been more interesting to explore if there are any differences in terms of the outcomes in light of the work elements of the respondents. Nevertheless, this ambition requires a change in the design of the original survey and instruments of research and, as such, shall be left to future initiatives. Although samples were collected from different countries, the sample sizes of those countries were not quite close to each other, which makes it hard to compare the situations in different countries. More countries and bigger sample size of public sector and private sector may shed insight on comparative issues on identified attributes towards adoption in these organizations. Further research can study relationship of agile methods adoption and cultural environment in public and private sectors. There is one issue that deserves more investigation in the future, and that is expanding the number of respondents from different countries to be involved in the survey to compare the similarities or discrepancies between these countries in terms of adopting Agile methods in organizations.

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Mishra, A., Abdalhamid, S., Mishra, D. et al. Organizational issues in embracing Agile methods: an empirical assessment. Int J Syst Assur Eng Manag 12 , 1420–1433 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13198-021-01350-1

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Received : 07 October 2020

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s13198-021-01350-1

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