Business Agility could be the means to survive in a competitive environment of continuous andunanticipated change and to respond quickly to rapidly changing, fragmenting global markets that are catered by competitors. To leverage the potential benefits of Business Agility, many companies use Information Technology as a major force for augmenting their agility. The topic of increasing Business Agility through Information Technology has been pervasively studied in research papers. And in the context of this thesis, we will investigate research papers in order to develop an evaluation model for facilitating making informed decisions regarding agile Information Systems in computational Grid environments. The Information Systems in this thesis will focus on license management systems, which is an intricate but coherently integrated blend of many different modules compiled as a technical solution that enables software license management. We will use our evaluation model to compare license management frameworks, easily grasped as a draft for a license management system, for Grid environments and also underpin it with a case study on an in-use license management system in order to strengthen its business applicability. The research was conducted as a qualitative comparison and a case study, combining both research papers and a real business context in order to fulfill the goals and purposes of this thesis. The results of the analysis implies that most of the license management frameworks for Grid environments lacks various details needed for making a feasible implementation in a certain business context, whilst those that have been trialed in a real business situation fulfilled almost every aspect of our evaluation model. The conclusion drawn is that our evaluation model is a seemingly good start for making informed decisions when choosing or designing an agile license management system for Grid environments

Syftet med uppsatsen var att analysera mindre IT-företag i expansionsfas. Det företag som låg till grund för studien var det mindre IT-företaget Cogitel. Forskningsmetoden för arbetet var en fallstudie, då uppsatsen grundläggande syfte var att studera och analysera ett specifikt studieobjekt. Det inledande forskningsarbetet har genomförts i form av kvalitativ metod för att skapa en grundläggande kunskap om studieobjektet företaget Cogitel och dess utveckling. Följande, så präglades ett induktivt tänkande den kvalitativa ansatsen och fokuserade på att tolka människans subjektiva upplevelse av omvärlden. Vid insamling av data har två typer av datadimensioner använts; primär data och sekundär data. Det material som samlades in i form av kvalitativ metod från företaget i fråga var den data som utgjorde det empiriska materialet. Den primära metoden för insamling av kvalitativ data som utgjorde det empiriska materialet genomfördes i form av en semistrukturerad intervjuteknik.För att besvara frågeställningen togs en teoretisk modell fram och låg som underlag för analysen. Slutsatsen drogs, utifrån presenterad teori och insamlat empiriskt material, att samtliga teorier byggde på att man som organisation fördelaktigt bland annat borde ha väldefinierade mål och en tydligt uttalad intern struktur. Det kan vara en strategi att vara ostrukturerad, vilket styrks av samtliga teoretiska utgångspunkter, men behövde ha ett givet syfte och vara uttalad för att kunna skapa värde för kärnorganisationen hos Cogitel. / The purpose of the essay was to analyze smaller IT companies that are in an expansion phase. The company that formed the basis of the study was the smaller IT company Cogitel.The research method of work was a case study, when the essay was the basic purpose to study and analyze a specific study object. This in-depth research was conducted in the form of qualitative method, for creating a basic knowledge of the study object of Cogitel and its development. Further, an inductive thinking was characterized by the qualitative approach and focused on interpreting man's subjective experience of the outside world. When collecting data, two types of data dimensions was used; primary data and secondary data. The material collected in the form of a qualitative method from the company in question was the data that constituted the empirical material. The primary method for collecting qualitative data that constituted the empirical material was carried out in the form of a semi-structured interview technique.To answer the research question, a theoretical model emerged and lay as a basis for the analysis. The conclusion was that based on the theories presented and collected empirical material, all theories were based on the fact that, as an organization, advantageous inter alia, should have well-defined goals and a clearly stated internal structure. There may be a strategy to be unstructured, which is strengthened by all theoretical assumptions, but needed a given purpose and be pronounced in order to create value for the core organization at Cogitel.

I en mer komplex och föränderlig värld har organisationer svårt att hänga med och tillräckligt snabbt ta vara på möjligheter, hantera utmaningar samt leva upp till förändringar i kundernas krav. De behöver därför öka sin förmåga att snabbare anpassa sig till förändring, något som benämns som business agility. För att bättre kunna hantera snabba förändringar har organisationer börjat arbeta enligt agila metoder, men dessa togs fram med enstaka team som förebild och är inte tänkta att hantera de utmaningar som uppstår när många team ska samarbeta i större organisationer. För att stora organisationer ska uppnå business agility behöver de skala upp de agila metoderna, denna organisationsförändring brukar benämnas som agil transformation. Till sin hjälp har de storskaliga agila ramverk. Det finns få fallstudier av agil transformation och tillämpningen av storskaliga agila ramverk i olika miljöer, i synnerhet i stora organisationer som är hårt reglerade och inom offentlig sektor. I de undersökningar och rapporter som finns är många utmaningar och framgångsfaktorer direkt eller indirekt koppling till ledarskapsfrågor men det finns begränsat med forskning om erfarenheter hos ledare, vilka är de personer som förväntas leda organisationsförändringen. Några av de största utmaningarna som har rapporterats är förändringsmotstånd hos medarbetare och en organisationskultur i strid med agila värderingar. Några av framgångsfaktorerna är stöd från ledning, kommunikation, transparens och att ökat kunnande i agil praxis. Syfte med denna studie är att från ett ledarskapsperspektiv undersöka en agil transformation med stöd av ett storskaligt agilt ramverk hos en myndighet. Den teoretiska referensramen innefattar teorier som har betydelse för förståelsen av business agility, agil transformation och lean-agilt ledarskap. En fallstudie som går på djupet och som ger möjlighet till en ingående beskrivning av verkligheten har valts och studien har en kvalitativ ansats. Fallet som studeras är utvecklingsverksamheten på Skatteverket som har använt det storskaliga agila ramverket SAFe som stöd i sin agila transformation. Data har samlats in genom intervjuer av personer med ledarroller och analysen av empirin är tematisk. Studiens slutsatser beskriver mötet mellan, dels den befintliga organisationsstrukturen och det storskaliga agila ramverket, dels mellan det konventionella ledarskapet och det agila. Studien ger svar på forskningsfrågan vilka lärdomar som kan ges till andra som planerar en storskalig agil transformation. Lärdomarna är kopplade till upplevelser av ett storskaliga agila ramverk, myndighetskontextens påverkan, beroenden, dubbla roller och ledarskap. / In a more complex and rapidly changing world, organizations find it difficult to keep up and take advantage of opportunities quickly enough, handle challenges and changes in customer requirements and therefore they need to increase their ability to adapt more quickly to change, something that is referred to as business agility. To better handle rapid change, organizations has adopted agile methods, but these were developed with individual teams as a model and are not intended to handle the challenges that arise when many teams work together in enterprises. For larger organizations, to achieve business agility, they need to scale up the agile methods and this change in organization is called an agile transformation. To their aid, they have large-scale agile frameworks. There are only a few case studies on agile transformation and the adaption of large-scale agile frameworks in various contexts, especially in large organizations that are strictly regulated and within the public sector. Many of the challenges and success factors that emerge from the studies and reports that do exist, are directly or indirectly linked to leadership issues, but there is limited research on the experiences of leaders, who are expected to lead the agile transformation. Some of the most reported challenges are resistance to change among employees and an organizational culture contrary to agile values. Support from leaders, communication, transparency, and increased knowledge in agile practices, are among the most reported success factors. The research objective is to examine an agile transformation, from a leadership perspective, with the support of a large-scale agile framework at government agency. The theoretical framework includes theories of importance for the understanding of business agility, agile transformation, and lean-agile leadership. A case study that goes in depth and which provides an opportunity for a detailed description of reality has been chosen and the study has a qualitative approach. The case being studied is the development department at Skatteverket (the Swedish Tax Agency), which has used the large-scale agile framework SAFe in its agile transformation. Data have been collected through interviews with people with leadership roles and the analysis of the empirical data is thematic. The conclusions of this study describe the meeting between the existing organizational structure and the large-scale agile framework, and between the traditional leadership and the agile. The study provides answers to the research question of what lessons can be given to others who are planning a large-scale agile transformation. The lessons are connected to experiences of a large-scale agile framework, the influence of the government agency context, dependencies, dual roles and leadership.

<p>E-business provides important opportunities of trade for businesses, and the supporting business system must handle this environment efficiently. One current trend in business systems is to move business logic, such as business processes and business rules, out from the application logic and into separate support systems. The reason to make this separation is to increase the agility of the business, to make the system able to change more rapidly when the business situation changes.</p><p>This report focus on business rules enforced in business rule engines. Specific interest is on how such rule engines meet the requirements of the e-business domain. The report presents an overview of business rule engines. Five general categories of characteristics are proposed. The proposed characteristics are then used in a comparison of three business rule engines.</p>

E-business provides important opportunities of trade for businesses, and the supporting business system must handle this environment efficiently. One current trend in business systems is to move business logic, such as business processes and business rules, out from the application logic and into separate support systems. The reason to make this separation is to increase the agility of the business, to make the system able to change more rapidly when the business situation changes. This report focus on business rules enforced in business rule engines. Specific interest is on how such rule engines meet the requirements of the e-business domain. The report presents an overview of business rule engines. Five general categories of characteristics are proposed. The proposed characteristics are then used in a comparison of three business rule engines.

Organizations have always tried and pushed themselves to bring changes in how they conduct business. They do this to reach the market quickly and achieve customer satisfaction. This master thesis was conducted at a global leader transportation company, Alstom, to investigate Scaled Agile Frameworks (SAFe) adoption in their Sweden Development Centre, identifying SAFe implementation challenges in a safety-related development as a single-case study. For the thesis, two research questions were formulated to identify the implementation challenges and find their reasons. For the data collection of the thesis, semi-structured interviews, self-completion surveys, and relevant research papers were used to serve the purpose of both primary data and secondary data sources. The researchers acted as ethnographers by participating in the company’s daily events and taking notes. The analysis of the collected data was done using the triangulation approach to get reliable results. In addition, researchers also used SAFe core competency assessment to evaluate the business agility of the case organization.The analysis from the collected data resulted in five implementation challenges. The data suggested that the major challenge was insufficient training and lack of agile mindset among the team members. The case organization had invested in training and support for going through the transformation, but the agile training was interrupted in 2019. Since then, the knowledge about SAFe and the agile way of working was acquired based on learning by doing. Based on the data, the researchers concluded that lack of continuous training has resulted in the development over time of other implementation challenges like insufficient self-organization, nonoptimal team size, and lack of clarity when defining role responsibilities. The data also suggested that transparent communication between different levels may still be a challenge. The SAFe assessment that has been conducted resulted in confirm previous result that in some places complemented the identified implementation challenges.  Key Words: Scaling Agile Framework, Implementation challenges, Lean, Waterfall, Self-organization, Continuous learning culture, Safety related development, Business agility, Ethnography.