Transition from plan driven to SAFe®: Periodic team self-assessment

Mohammad Abdur Razzak, John Noll, Ita Richardson, Clodagh Nic Canna, Sarah Beecham

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

Context: How to adopt, scale and tailor agile methods depends on several factors such as the size of the organization, business goals, operative model, and needs. The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe®) was developed to support organizations to scale agile practices across the enterprise. Problem: Early adopters of SAFe® tend to be large multi-national enterprises who report that the adoption of SAFe® has led to significant productivity and quality gains. However, little is known about whether these benefits translate to small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs). Method: As part of a longitudinal study of an SME transitioning to SAFe we ask, to what extent are SAFe® practices adopted at the team level? We targeted all team members and administrated a mixed method survey in February, 2017 and in July, 2017 to identify and evaluate the adoption rate of SAFe® practices. Results: Initially in Quarter 1, teams were struggling with PI/Release health and Technical health throughout the organization as most of the teams were transitioning from plan-driven to SAFe®. But, during the transition period in Quarter 3, we observed discernible improvements in different areas of SAFe practice adoption. Conclusion: The observed improvement might be due to teams merely becoming more familiar with the practices over-time. However, management had also made some structural changes to the teams that may account for the change.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProduct-Focused Software Process Improvement -18th International Conference, PROFES 2017, Proceedings
EditorsBurak Turhan, Dietmar Winkler, Federica Sarro, Marcos Kalinowski, Daniel Mendez Fernandez, Michael Felderer
PublisherSpringer Verlag
Pages573-585
Number of pages13
ISBN (Print)9783319699257
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2017
Event18th International Conference on Product-Focused Software Process Improvement, PROFES 2017 - Innsbruck, Austria
Duration: 29 Nov 20171 Dec 2017

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume10611 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference18th International Conference on Product-Focused Software Process Improvement, PROFES 2017
Country/TerritoryAustria
CityInnsbruck
Period29/11/171/12/17

Keywords

  • Global software engineering
  • Inter-team coordination
  • Metrics
  • Process assessment
  • SAFe
  • Scrum
  • Software process improvement

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