How are agile release trains formed in practice? A case study in a large financial corporation

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Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Conference article in proceedings
Date
2019-01-01
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Language
en
Pages
17
154-170
Series
Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming - 20th International Conference, XP 2019, Proceedings, Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, Volume 355
Abstract
The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) is currently the most widely adopted framework for scaling agile in the software intensive industry. Despite this, there exists very little scientific research on the transformation process, as well as on the challenges and success factors of using SAFe in large-scale organizations. To start filling in this research gap, we conducted a case study by investigating the formation of agile release trains and the related challenges in a large financial organization adopting SAFe. We conducted 24 interviews with 27 interviewees, after which we analyzed the transcribed interviews using open and axial coding. The SAFe transformation started by forming a pilot train with teams that already had experience in agile practices. The success of the pilot led to the launching of new release trains. The forming of new agile release trains was challenging due to politics, difficulties in identifying the value streams, and the avoidance of a radical restructuring of the organization. These challenges led to opting for an organic way of transformation. Management organized several workshops to identify stakeholders for the second train. This was followed by team members choosing their teams based on skills and interests. The last two trains were formed using Lego workshops. The most significant challenges after forming the release trains at the case organization were struggles with existing projects and challenges due to inter-train dependencies.
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Keywords
Agile release trains, Challenges, SAFe, Scaled agile framework
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Citation
Putta , A , Paasivaara , M & Lassenius , C 2019 , How are agile release trains formed in practice? A case study in a large financial corporation . in S Fraser , F Coallier & P Kruchten (eds) , Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming - 20th International Conference, XP 2019, Proceedings . Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing , vol. 355 , Springer , pp. 154-170 , International Conference on Agile Software Development , Montreal , Canada , 21/05/2019 . https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19034-7_10