Changing planning and resourcing practices

One major issue in adopting agile development in new organizations is that management tends to consider agile projects similarly to traditional projects. Agile adoption-related studies are mentioning that staying in old plan-driven way in project planning and re-sourcing is an obstacle that agile projects face in organizations which are not fully sup-porting it (e.g. Jovanovic et al. 2017; Dikert et al. 2016; Laanti et al. 2011). Agile projects require responsive management and continuous planning. They do not support substan-tial documentation and fixed and bureaucratic organizations that do not allow organic changes. (Conboy & Coyle 2011) These factors lead to conflict in an organization which is used to run traditional plan-driven projects where traditional project-planning dimen-sions cost, schedule, and scope are fixed as early as possible.

Results support these statements. Implementing new project planning practices, and modifying old ones to support better agile development, are causing major challenges in a large organization which is not used to act in software projects and do not have

previ-ous experiences of agile development. When selecting agile methodology, planning ac-tivities should be distributed along the project and they should be focused on getting accurate plans for smaller sprints instead of the whole project. Agile development is not forgetting the overall view. It assumes that with this uncertainty level project should not be planned too far from the beginning since change during the pro-gress is inevitable and even wanted. Roadmapping and long-term visions are still very important in agile projects especially in bigger and more heterogenous organizations like the Case Company. Those form the foundations for the whole project work and enable change communication and commitment building from the beginning of the project. Ser-rador & Pinto (2015) named quality of the vision and goals, how they fit to larger

organi-zational goals, to be t success. This theory can be

seen supported by the results.

Inadequate stakeholder commitment and obscure deployment phase can be seen con-sequences of lacking or not ideally communicated project vision. Role of discovery work and idea validation was discussed in interviews. They play a major role in roadmapping and MVP defining processes and should be emphasized more in order to avoid unnec-essary work. Alignment between business and development viewpoints should already be included in the discovery phase.

High-level action points in improving planning processes to support agile projects are following:

1. Distributing expectations, like costs and schedule of agile projects, to one development cycle at a time

2. Agile projects should be approached as investments in innovations which include tolerating uncertainty in long-term planning

3. Crucial milestones like deployment of MVP and ramp-down of old systems need to be better clarified in project roadmaps and visions

Sometimes plan-driven project management might be needed in order to ensure conduction of crucial phases inside agile projects. When conse-quences of failure are intolerable, agile methodology is not suitable (Kruchten 2013)

Project resourcing requires also different approach in agile projects. In the Case Com-pany, and during the projects, employee need was filled with old employees. This re-quired adopting different project managerial roles and acquiring new capabilities. Agile

development requires management style to become-people centric and collaborative in-stead of commanding and controlling (Conboy & Coyle 2011). Role of product owner is discussed in various studies, Dikert et al. (2016) and Hoda et al. (2018), for example underlined the importance of dedicated PO for the success of the whole initiative and

their understanding in business and technology and driving agile ways of working in the organization. Results supports the importance of product owner in development work.

knowledge are rare and they are most likely tied and irreplaceable in their business man-agement roles. If project manager needs to act in the role of product owner simultane-ously, the person is likely to have too big allocation. When project is bigger and more complex, it needs to start splitting project-managerial responsibilities to different parts in order to ensure efficient and continuous flow. Following roles are recommended to be taken into account when project resourcing is made:

Product owner- leader of the development work and main link between business and developers

Project manager- person who ensures that conditions are suitable. Represents the project outside project group, builds supportive network within the company, and communicates change

Business analyst- supports product owner by gathering business needs and transfers them to product backlog

Scrum master- ensures performance of operative development by facilitating daily actions

To summarize findings of this study, following learnings of project roles and resourcing were made:

1. Agile project resourcing differs from traditional projects and requires new competences combining technology and business knowledge

2. Project manager working in multiple roles in an agile project is likely to become overloaded when project complexity increases

Business owners should be trained more systematically for securing and increasing in-house-PO capabilities. According to the results, external courses and certificates would be useful for personnel frequently participating to agile development projects.