Adoption of agile approaches to large IT projects

Artur Krotkov

Master's thesis

Abstract:

From the early 50s of the last century project management methodologies and frameworks started to evolve rapidly. This resulted in the existence of a number of approaches for the management of project. In recent years, agile frameworks gained exposure and became very popular among various industries. Nevertheless, there are some limitations which prevent them to be widely popular for large IT projects. The research goals are:Identify challenges and success factors of adopting agile approaches to large IT projects.2. Conduct a supervised experiment to observe the transition of a large IT project from a predictive to an agile approach.3. Develop a set of recommendations on the use of the agile approaches to manage large IT projects in a particular organization where the experiment was conducted.The theoretical part of the thesis provides a detailed overview of agile and non-agile frameworks and methodologies, identifies and summarises existing theoretical research on the application of these methodologies and frameworks to large IT projects. Next sections of the thesis describe some popular agile scaling frameworks and compare them against each other. Supervised experiment describes the transition of the large IT project from the waterfall model to Scrum. Development team members and IT project lead provide detailed feedback on the transition process. Based on the findings of this experiment, a set of practical recommendations for scaling agile for large IT projects is proposed.

Abstract:

From the early 50s of the last century project management methodologies and frameworks started to evolve rapidly. This resulted in the existence of a number of approaches for the management of project. In recent years, agile frameworks gained exposure and became very popular among various industries. Nevertheless, there are some limitations which prevent them to be widely popular for large IT projects. The research goals are:Identify challenges and success factors of adopting agile approaches to large IT projects.2. Conduct a supervised experiment to observe the transition of a large IT project from a predictive to an agile approach.3. Develop a set of recommendations on the use of the agile approaches to manage large IT projects in a particular organization where the experiment was conducted.The theoretical part of the thesis provides a detailed overview of agile and non-agile frameworks and methodologies, identifies and summarises existing theoretical research on the application of these methodologies and frameworks to large IT projects. Next sections of the thesis describe some popular agile scaling frameworks and compare them against each other. Supervised experiment describes the transition of the large IT project from the waterfall model to Scrum. Development team members and IT project lead provide detailed feedback on the transition process. Based on the findings of this experiment, a set of practical recommendations for scaling agile for large IT projects is proposed.

Keywords

Agile transformation, Agile scaling, Agile challenges

Keywords

Agile transformation, Agile challenges, Agile scaling

Language used: English

Date on which the thesis was submitted / produced: 30. 10. 2018

Thesis defence

• Date of defence: 10. 6. 2019
• Supervisor: Jan Kučera
• Reader: Filip Vencovský

Vysoká škola ekonomická v Praze

Master programme / field:
Aplikovaná informatika / Information Systems Management