Agile Implementation on Department Level - A Case Study of a Large Organization

Abstract

As established organizations are trying to combat the fast-moving and turbulent business environment and remain competitive, they are becoming aware of the importance to become more flexible and adaptive to changes. Firms have started to realize that a way to achieve this is through the implementation of agile methods. As a consequence, manufacturers of physical products operating in traditional industries have been found to implement agile methods within certain departments and throughout the organization. Current research, however, is limited in the field of how to achieve agility on a department level and the impact that contexts associated with different departments may have on an agile implementation. The aim of this thesis is thus to provide insight regarding how to foster agile initiatives on a department level in a large organization. In order to reach this aim, a qualitative study conducted from a managerial perspective with thirteen semi-structured interviews was conducted. The findings show that different levels of agile maturity as well as different prerequisites to apply agile due to the contexts within departments seem to influence what challenges and facilitators that appear when implementing agile methods. Eight main challenges were identified within departments which could be divided into sub-challenges. Further, six main facilitators were identified within departments which could also be divided into sub-facilitators. Furthermore, these did not appear to be uniform across departments but rather seemed to depend on different levels of maturity and the context of departments. Some challenges and facilitators also appeared to be connected to the larger organizational context. Hence, the study shows that there is a need to look into the specific departmental context as well as the organization at large to further foster an agile implementation on department level.