The conceptual framework of agile software development is an ever-growing movement in the software industry. However, recent studies have shown that large, less software-focused companies, where software development is primarily used for in-house IT-solutions, struggle with giving up traditional command-control type of management. This hits hard on some of the most important principles of agile software development and in many cases this phenomenon has inevitably led to large gaps between development teams and more managerial parts of the organization. This thesis has aimed to study this gap and investigate how it affects software development teams’ ability to carry out their work. By comparing three software teams that were internally highly similar but with varying external conditions, impact on the teams’ behaviour based on their different environments was studied. The study was carried out using a multiple-case study approach with primary data sources consisting of survey gathered data from all team members and interviews with a subset of the team members. The results gathered from this study suggest that agile development teams are extremely dependent on a well-functioning interface to business related parts of an organization. Regarding teams’ ability to make decisions and being agile in their way of working, the results primarily isolate impediments with roots in an unwillingness to adhere to and lack of understanding of agile principles. In this thesis, our gathered results were also correlated with a modern framework called Flow in order to confirm its relevance regarding analyzing software development teams in large-scale environments.

Background Lean and agile approaches to product development impose a paradigm shift in the way organizations are structured, lead, affect the core culture of the firms that use them. As more and more organizations attempt the move from traditional to lean-agile ways of working a large number of challenges and success factors from these transitions are reported in the scientific literature. Many of these challenges can be mitigated, and the success factors boosted, by the traditional line-manager. Objectives The objective of this study is to provide an empirically grounded theory of what managers can and should do in order to ease the transition to lean-agile ways of developing products and services. Methods This study uses constructivist grounded theory in order to obtain an empirically based theory for how managers ease the transition. This is achieved by combining the results from an online survey, a series of interviews, and field observations. The collected data is then analyzed, categorized and continuously tested against new data, resulting in an emergent theory that can be put into the context of the available scientific literature. Results This thesis presents the results from a yearlong study of a Swedish organization in the middle of transitioning from a traditional plan-driven to a scaled lean-agile approach to product development. The resulting theory states that managers can greatly ease the transition by being the manager teachers for their organizations and committedly leading the way in adopting the lean-agile values, principles and methods, in a value-based manner – making sure the new ways are adapted to fit the context of the company and its goals as an organization. Conclusions The conclusion of the study is that not only are managers needed in organizations adopting lean-agile values, principles and methods, they are central to a successful adoption. However, when not being knowledgeable of lean-agile, not staying committed, and not engaging with the teams and practitioners the managers may on the contrary end up costing the company the opportunities offered by the new approach to product development. The resulting theory is grounded both in empirical data and the scientific literature.

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.

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.