Change barriers preventing agile adoption

Change management issues were asked from respondents in separate question What is preventing Agile implementation the most in your organization? in the end of the in-terviews. Following table concludes named barriers and number of respondents men-tioning it in interviews:

Change barriers preventing agile adoption

Barrier # of responses

Lack of knowledge/ poor communication of new things 5 Need to stand more uncertainty when outcome is not defined in advance 5

Lack of support from management/ coworkers 4

4

Fear of increasing complexity 2

Tight schedules 1

Effort in establishing closer relationship with stakeholders 1

Changes in project personnel 1

1. Lack of knowledge/ poor communication of new things

Respondents mentioned most frequently barriers in informing people about new ways of working. Selling the benefits and showing what is the actual potential added value with agile methodology needs to be done prior demanding people to adopt it (A1; C1). Lacking change communication was seen impeding change from happening. Practical examples and demonstrations were mentioned multiple times as important source to spread and deepen the knowledge within the company. On the other hand, lack of benchmark-level successes due to the fact that agile methodology has not been utilized prior was said to be a critical slowing factor in information diffusion (D).

2. Need to stand more uncertainty when outcome is not defined in advance Uncertainty that agile methodology requires was named other main source of change resistant that interviewees had experienced. This was affecting both in worker level and management level: team members might need to be committed until further notice and workload might vary more which can be seen causing difficulties not only to the worker but also for project planning and resourcing (D). People assumed to have a certain level of control in their work which agility is generally seen decreasing (C2). Agile projects require accepting uncertainty in some extent. Since agile projects are rather recent in the case company there have been more traditional approach to project planning when projects initiatives have been launched. At least business-led projects appeared to have highly cost and schedule driven valuation and details were wanted to be locked already

in the planning phase (A3; B) You

have to trust o told C2 and underlined that

the steering of an agile project should happen during the progress. From management this requires not only tolerating uncertainties but also actively participation and time allo-cation to the development work.

3. Lack of support from management/ coworkers

Lack of management support can be seen behind many of these barriers. Inexperience of agile projects drives to too fixed plans and false expectations which might result agile projects to be seen in negative light. Agility and agile projects require seamless collabo-ration of different functional units across the organization. Currently cross-functional col-laboration is not working as it should be in an optimal scenario which caused problems in committing different units and getting feedback across organizational borders practi-cally in all the cases. Corporate culture as an enabler of agility was splitting respondents roughly to two parts: others saw it too traditional and inflexible for agile ways of working where room needs to be left for uncertainty and unplanned Everything cannot

be planned beforehand which needs to be accepted.

attitude is slowing the change, culture in which only outcome is valued, and risks cannot be taken is braking stated one respondent mainly referring to the role of middle-management.On the other hand, respondents generally found top management rather enabling than preventing agile-thinking. At least some kind of grad-ual shift to the right direction in corporate culture was mentioned in a few interviews. This is in line with the earlier mentioned digital strategy which stated that agile methodology has started to take place in corporate strategy.

4. rn new things

General change resistant, negative attitude towards the change, was mentioned in half of the interviews. Need to get aware of the change by building up urgency towards the change and communicating the benefits of it were noted. C1 noted that change manage-ment is often easily forgotten. He st system development projects are side-by-side trainings etc. in order to explain why and how the new way is an improvement compared to the old one Change-preventing non-players

were also mentioned.

As in project communication, there exists different levels and types of changes that are relevant in this kind of change processes like these projects and were present in inter-views:

1. Changes in working habits of project team members and main stakeholders How to involve and commit all to agile development work?

2.

How to ensure success in system deployment and usage?

3. Changes in corporate culture

How organization and its people can be made more compatible with agile development?

Questions illustrate general change managerial troubles that were brought up multiple times during interviews. They are further analyzed and answered in discussion chapter.

4.3.3 Increasing agile adoption and knowledge beyond the