Search results

Numerous approaches from the field of economics already exist for the improvement of business processes. In the field of software development, work has been done on improving development processes. For years, the focus here has been on agile approaches. Although various approaches for improving business processes exist, it is becoming increasingly difficult to adapt business processes to the fast-moving conditions of the market and the business environment. Agile approaches address this issue. Thus, not only software development processes, but also business processes should benefit from agile approaches.

To this end, values and principles of the Agile Manifesto, agile methods such as Scrum, and various agile practices such as the Kanban board should be applied in business processes. This paper examines the work already done on this topic. With the help of a systematic literature review (SLR), literature studies dealing with the implementation of the agile approach in business processes are identified.

This paper presents, investigates and contrasts 12 primary sources dealing with agile and business processes and shows how they are different/ equal regarding three research questions.

We provide an overview of existing approaches handling the combination of agile and business processes to improve business processes.

Agile methods are increasingly being applied in the contexts of innovation beyond traditional information technology (IT) and physical product development projects, such as when process improvements are being implemented. Nevertheless, this phenomenon is still recent and little addressed in the literature, with few descriptions of empirical cases. This study aims to address this gap.

This multiple case study aims to present and discuss the application of Agile practices embedded in large companies’ innovation value chains, focusing on improvements of business processes. The following research question is pursued: How are large companies applying elements of Agile methods to their innovation processes when implementing incremental improvements in their operational processes? Based on the idea that the Agile-Stage-Gate model is an alternative to this challenge, this study investigates the application of this hybrid model in two large Brazilian companies by presenting their idiosyncrasies, lessons learned, adaptations, challenges and benefits.

Overall, it was observed that the experience with the application of the Agile-Stage-Gate model is positive for these companies, with better customer engagement, easier project control and increased productivity of the project team.

For those aiming to implement the Agile-Stage-Gate model, this paper identifies the main adaptations made in order to combine the purist approaches and critical success factors for its implementation.

Agile principles have been widely used in software development team practice since the creation of the Agile Manifesto. Studies have examined variables related to agile principles without systematically considering the relationships among key team, agile methodology, and process variables underlying the agile principles and how these variables jointly influence the achievement of software development agility. In this study, the authors tested a team/methodology–process–agility model that links team variables (team autonomy and team competence) and methodological variable (iterative development) to process variables (communication and collaborative decision-making), which are in turn linked to software development agility (ability to sense, respond and learn).

Survey data from one hundred and sixty software development professionals were analyzed using structural equation modeling methods.

The results support the team/methodology–process–agility model. Process variables (communication and collaborative decision-making) mediated the effects of team (autonomy and competence) and methodological (iterative development) variables on software development agility. In addition, team, methodology and process variables had different effects on the three dimensions of software development agility.

The results contribute to the literature on organizational IT management by establishing a team/methodology–process–agility model that can serve as a basis for developing a core theoretical foundation underlying agile principles and practices. The results also have practical implications for organizations in understanding and managing holistically the different roles that agile methodological, team and process factors play in achieving software development agility.

The purpose of the paper is to investigate the critical success factors (CSFs) associated with the effectiveness of transfer and sharing of tacit knowledge in lean and agile construction processes.

The study identifies ten CSFs that initiate the transferring and sharing of tacit knowledge. The CSFs are validated through quantitative study. This study recruited project managers, executives, consultants and other managers that are directly involved in the management of a construction project. It recruits the respondents those have background and experience from disciplines such as lean construction, agile construction, construction supply chain (CSC) and knowledge management in lean, agile and CSC. The data collected through self-administrative questionnaire are categorised as ordinal data to analyse in SPSS with frequency and Kruskal–Wallis H test, Spearman’s correlation analysis and a rank-order analysis is done to establish the level of importance of those factors.

Initially, “Trust between construction organisations” is identified as the foremost CSF. Moreover, other CSFs such as motivation, leadership capabilities, business strategies and organisational capabilities follow trust.

This is the first study that investigates and establishes the CSFs that are essential to initiate transferring and sharing tacit knowledge in a lean and in an agile construction processes.

Business Process Management (BPM) is key for successful organisational management. However, BPM techniques are often criticized for their inability to deal with continuous and significant change and uncertainty. Following recent calls to make BPM more agile and flexible towards change, this study presents the results of a systematic literature review (SLR) of agile concepts in BPM. Analysing and synthesising previous works and drawing on agility research in the field of IS, this paper introduces a framework for agile BPM. Integrating different components that define agility in the context of BPM, this framework offers a number of important implications. On the theoretical side, the authors argue that the concept of agile BPM departs in some important ways from traditional BPM research. This, in turn, points to various opportunities for future research. On the practical side, the authors suggest that emerging technologies, such as process mining, embody important features that help organisations to be more responsive to change. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

To assess the state of the art of agility in the BPM research, the authors conducted an SLR. More specifically, the authors drew on the approach of vom Brocke et al. (2009, 2015), which consists of five steps: defining the scope of the review; conceptualising the topic; searching for literature; analysing and synthesising literature; and developing a research agenda.

This study presents the results of a systematic review of agile concepts in BPM. This study then proposes a resulting research framework that can be used to strengthen the concept of agile BPM and provides an agenda for research in this rapidly growing and increasingly necessary area of BPM.

In this paper, the authors establish a shared understanding of agile BPM and develop an agile BPM framework that represents the current state as well as implications for research and practice in agile BPM.

Digitalising cities requires new urban governance processes that account for rapidly changing environments and technological advances. In this context, agile development methods have become valuable, if not necessary. However, agile development contradicts public administration practices of risk aversion and long-term planning. The purpose of this study is to discuss practical avenues for navigating these two contradictions by adapting agile development to the needs of public sector organisations.

The authors review the collaborative elaboration of Dresden’s smart city strategy as a critical case study. Dresden’s smart city strategy was developed using agile development and quadruple-helix innovation. The year-long co-creation process involved stakeholders from various groups to conceive an integrated and sustainable vision for digitalisation-based urban development.

Despite the apparent contradictions, this study finds that key aspects of agile development are feasible for public sector innovation. Firstly, risks can be strategically managed and distributed among administration and non-administration stakeholders. Secondly, while delivering value through short iterative loops, adherence to formal processes remains possible. Informal feedback cycles can be harmoniously combined with official statements, allowing iterative progress.

The empirical material is based on a single case study and thus risks overemphasising the general applicability of the proposed methods.

This paper outlines practical steps to greater agility for public administration engaged in digitalising cities. The paper conceptualises a forward and lateral momentum for the agile development of a smart city strategy that aims to reconcile formal policymaking processes with short-term loops and risk aversion with experimental value creation. This approach balanced risks, created value and enhanced the strategy‘s alignment with strategic frameworks, ultimately promoting innovation in the public sector.

This paper proposes a novel, empirically grounded conceptualisation of implementing agile methods that explicitly recognises the peculiarities of public administrations. It conceptualises the orchestrated and pragmatic use of specific agile development methods to advance the digitalisation of cities.

The purpose of this paper is to build a theoretic and practical framework, based on agile project management, to support the decision-making process in order to help companies in optimizing the reengineering production processes and improve management costs.

This paper seeks to propose an agile Reengineering Performance Model (ARPM) for managing projects of reengineering of processes and applies it in a real case study concerning a water bottling plant.

The proposed model should serve as a valuable tool to facilitate a successful business process reengineering design in the project management and intends to assist companies as they operate projects of transferring and optimizing production lines. Thanks to the use of ARPM tools, it is easy to modify the evolution of the project, with the possibility of extending or enhancing the application if necessary.

The main limits of the ARPM model are: it requires close collaboration among team; it is rather intense for developers; and it is necessary flexibility to change course as needed and to ensure delivery of the right product.

The main implications of the authors’ work for research and business are to propose a structured methodological approach, rigorous but simple, suitable to implement in any companies.

The novelty of the approach is to apply the agile approach not for software development but in a manufacturing company.

This study aims to examine the enablers of productivity of enterprise-level Agile development process using modified total interpretative structural modeling (TISM). The two main objectives of the current study are to determine the variables influencing enterprise-level agile development productivity and to develop modified TISM for the corresponding components.

To identify enablers of the productivity of enterprise-level agile software development process a literature review and opinions of domain experts were collected. A hierarchical relationship among variables that show direct and indirect influence is created using the modified TISM (M-TISM) technique with Cross Impact Matrix-Multiplication Applied to Classification analysis. This study examined and analyzed the relationships between the determinants within the enterprise using a M-TISM technique.

With the literature review, the study could identify ten enabling factors of the productivity of Agile development process at the enterprise level. Results depict that program increment (PI) planning and scalable backlog management, continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD), agile release trains (ART), agile work culture, delivery excellence, lean and DevOps practices, value stream mapping (VMS), team skills and expertise, collaborative culture, agile coaching, customer engagement have an impact on the productivity of enterprise-level Agile development process. The results show that team collaboration, agile ways of working and customer engagement have a greater impact on productivity improvement for enterprise-level Agile development process.

The developed model is useful for organizations employing scaled Agile development processes in software development. This study provides a recommended listing of key enablers, that may enable productivity improvements in the Agile development process at the enterprise level. Strategists should focus on team collaboration and Agile project management. This study offers a modified TISM model to academicians to help them understand the effects of numerous variables on maintaining the productivity of an enterprise-level Agile. The identified characteristics and their hierarchical structure can help project managers during the execution of Agile projects at the enterprise level, more effectively, increasing their success and productivity.

The study addresses the gap in the literature by interpretative relationships between the identified enabling factors. The model validation is carried out by a panel of nine experts from several information technology organizations deploying Agile software development at the enterprise level. This unique method broadens the knowledge base in Agile software development at scale and provides project managers and practitioners with a practical foundation.

The purpose of this paper is to present the findings of Phase 1 of the research and to identify Australian agile software development organizations having such coexistence of agile and software configuration management (SCM) practices. This study employed “organization size” variable to study the phenomenon and used theory of Lean Thinking as a lens to analyse implementation variations of agile and SCM practices.

For this study, the research design was comprised of three phases. In Phase 1, a quantitative study using an online survey was performed to answer RQ using various statistical techniques. In Phase 2, an initial conceptual model based on a literature review was developed, and then a qualitative study was performed using one longitudinal case study. In Phase 3, another online survey was performed using various parametric statistical techniques to validate and generalize the findings of Phase 1 and 2 and the proposed SLAM traceability model. The scope of this paper is to discuss only Phase 1 and its associated findings.

The results of the analysis indicated that organizations, regardless of their size, frequently use agile practices for their software development operations. On the other hand, larger organizations use SCM practices comparatively more than medium and small organizations. However, traces of customized SCM process were found in most of the respondent (large, medium, and small) organizations, which indicates the coexistence of agile and SCM practices.

As there is no known listing or database available for such specialized criteria, a non-probabilistic sampling method was used, in the sense that the selection of members of the sample was arbitrary and subjective instead of a non-random selection from the pool of all agile practitioners in the field.

By using the quantitative method approach, this study aims to generate empirical evidence to contribute to the body of knowledge in the relevant areas. On the practical side, this research can also provide support to IT businesses in general, and software development organizations in particular, with the streamlining of the internal operational environment for the facilitation of an adaptable process and the resulting coexistence of value-added agile and SCM practices.

According to the authors research, Agile approaches are increasingly being deployed successfully alongside phase-gate processes in engineering and R&D functions outside software, with a very positive result.

An Agile approach to product development has been a mainstay of the software industry since the turn of the century. In recent years, some non-software product-based companies have successfully combined both Agile and non-Agile methods in a complementary way to pursue breakthrough innovation. The article reports on how to make this combination work.

The study found companies adopting two general approaches when trying to introduce Agile into an existing phase-gate process: integrating Agile into a single innovation process or adding a partly parallel Agile path.

As a measure of Agile’s potential, the software industry has consistently produced patents at three times the level of the next-most prolific sectors.

Arthur D. Little’s research reveals that companies that have successfully added Agile methods to their toolboxes and tailor their innovation approaches by the type of innovation – incremental or breakthrough–perform significantly better than those that stick to single phase-gate approach.