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Transition from Plan Driven to SAFe®: Periodic Team Self-Assessment

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Product-Focused Software Process Improvement (PROFES 2017)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 10611))

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.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    http://www.agilescaling.org/home.html.

  2. 2.

    https://www.agilealliance.org/glossary/scrum-of-scrums/.

  3. 3.

    https://less.works.

  4. 4.

    http://www.scaledagileframework.com.

  5. 5.

    http://www.disciplinedagiledelivery.com.

  6. 6.

    http://blog.crisp.se/2012/11/14/henrikkniberg/scaling-agile-at-spotify.

  7. 7.

    https://www.scrum.org/resources/nexus-guide.

  8. 8.

    https://www.scruminc.com/scrum-scale-case-modularity/.

  9. 9.

    http://www.scaledagileframework.com/metrics/#T4.

  10. 10.

    A list of criteria which must be met before a product increment “often a user story” is considered “done”.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the members of TeamA, TeamB, and TeamC for their generous and thoughtful collaboration on this study, and for allowing us to study their software development efforts. This work was supported, in part, by Science Foundation Ireland grant 13/RC/2094 to Lero - the Irish Software Research Centre (www.lero.ie).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Lero, The Irish Software Research Centre, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland

    Mohammad Abdur Razzak, Ita Richardson & Sarah Beecham

  2. University of East London, University Way, London, E16 2RD, UK

    John Noll

  3. Ocuco Ltd., Blanchardstown Corporate Park, Dublin, D15 N5DX, Ireland

    Clodagh Nic Canna

Authors
  1. Mohammad Abdur Razzak
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  2. John Noll
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  3. Ita Richardson
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  4. Clodagh Nic Canna
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  5. Sarah Beecham
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mohammad Abdur Razzak .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria

    Michael Felderer

  2. Technical University Munich, Garching, Germany

    Daniel Méndez Fernández

  3. Brunel University London, Uxbridge, United Kingdom

    Burak Turhan

  4. Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

    Marcos Kalinowski

  5. University College London, London, United Kingdom

    Federica Sarro

  6. Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria

    Dietmar Winkler

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Razzak, M.A., Noll, J., Richardson, I., Canna, C.N., Beecham, S. (2017). Transition from Plan Driven to SAFe®: Periodic Team Self-Assessment. In: Felderer, M., Méndez Fernández, D., Turhan, B., Kalinowski, M., Sarro, F., Winkler, D. (eds) Product-Focused Software Process Improvement. PROFES 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10611. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69926-4_47

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69926-4_47

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-69925-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-69926-4

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