Abstract

Software development organizations are adopting values, principles, and frameworks to implement agile ways of working today. But the agile methods were initially designed for use in small, single-team projects and routines for coordination between several teams have not been adopted in the same way as routines for coordination within the team. The Scaled Agile Framework has become the most common way to implement organizational routines for inter-team coordination, but critiques claim it to be too strict and formal, without leeway for adaption. This study investigates the dynamics of inter-team coordination routines at three organizations and provides thick descriptions of tailoring. Data collection was performed by 379 hours of observations and 28 interviews. The main findings highlight the variety in ostensive and performative aspects of coordination routines and how they change over time. Contrary to earlier findings, the ostensive and performative aspects in this study do not have opposing varieties. This indicates that the empirical relationship between ostensive and performative aspects might not be as atypical as previous results suggest. An important practical contribution is the described possible tailoring options when scaling up agile ways of working which contradict the view of the framework being too rigid.

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