Agile Enterprise Transformations: Surveying the Many Facets of Agility for the Hybrid Era

Agile companies are not uniform. Consequently, agile transformations are conceived broadly, ranging from adopting agile methods and practices in software development teams or functions to building all-encompassing enterprise agility. Moreover, the targeted effects of agility may vary, and the success of transformations and the attainment of agility are measured in various ways. In this paper, based on a recent industrial survey study, we scrutinize holistically why companies want to transform, what types of agility they are aiming at, and how they gauge transformations. The survey data was collected during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Most of the respondents were in large or very large companies in Finland and Sweden in diverse industry domains. The main findings indicate that there are many reasons for companies to transform both to improve external outcomes (fore mostly responsiveness) and to develop internal capabilities (adaptability, organizational learning). Companies seemed to have aims and goals with respect to all types of agility, including business agility. As the nature of transformations and the companies' aims and goals vary, the transformations follow various means and measures. As a conclusion, for the hybrid era, we advise companies to consider how agility has benefited during the pandemic era, how hybrid work possibly affects the goals for agile transformations and the different facets of agility, and how to sustain agility in hybrid work. © 2022 IEEE.

A Retrospective on The Challenges of Incorporating Grey Literature into a Scholarly Publishing Platform

In 2019, GeoScienceWorld was actively planning to bring a large content and data repository, that includes a significant proportion of highly valued Grey Literature, into our existing collection of 50+ peer-reviewed journals and over 2300 books in the geosciences. Due to various external situations, including the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, and an absence of community-accepted standards for Grey Literature publishing, this project has stalled. GeoScienceWorld continues to investigate opportunities to bring original datasets, as well as other collections of Grey Literature, predominantly in the form of partner societies' conference proceedings and related conference materials, into our traditional research platform. We are also in the early stages of planning for a new research tool that will be truly content agnostic in bringing research and valuable insights to our primary end-user stakeholders, researchers, whether in academia or industry. As an organization, GeoScienceWorld is further implementing an Agile mindset and development philosophy to bring increasingly useful, and timely, resources to our stakeholder groups. A key ceremony of all truly Agile development processes is the Retrospective. In this paper, I review the initial aims of the project to incorporate a large grey dataset into our traditional scholarly literature platform and provide reflections on how both GeoScienceWorld and the wider Grey Literature community can move forward to bring such valuable datasets to audiences that both want and need, such content to advance their research. For each element of the initial project, I ask the following Agile Retrospective questions: What did we do well? What could we have done better? What have we learned? What are we still puzzled by? As a result of applying these questions to the initial project, I will present recommendations that both inform GeoScienceWorld's future integration and presentation of Grey Literature, as well as offer a clearer path toward greater Grey Literature acceptance within traditional scholarly platforms such as ours. © 2023 TextRelease. All rights reserved.

Agile and generic work values of British vs Indian IT workers: a culture-clash case

Purpose>After deciding to become agile, many information technology (IT) units struggle;they underestimate the needed managerial expertise to alter their current culture toward an agile one, particularly when cross-cultural (f)actors are involved. Given that work values are the key to an organizational culture, the study derived a set of agile work values of culturally diverse IT professionals together with a set of well-known generic work values. Consequently, the authors illustrate that managers in charge of the transition to an effective agile culture must pay serious attention to the specific value constellations of its often highly diverse workforce.Design/methodology/approach>A literature review resulted in an initial list of agile work values. Then, mainly through a Delphi round, 12 agile-specific work values were established. These were survey rated, along with the validated set of 18 generic work values, by 102 British and Indian IT professionals in a digital service and consulting firm that was requested by its client to become agile. The observations made in 14 feedback group-interview-type dialogs enriched the surveyed data further.Findings>In the current exploratory study, four generic value dimensions were complemented by two agile-specific ones: team communication and shared responsibility. Among the British and Indian (on-site and offshore) workers, only 2 of the 30 current work values were shared while 7 significant value differences were found, explaining the noted employee bitterness, productivity losses and client disengagement. This situation was reflected in the many discrepancies between the professionals' ideal agile way of working and how their unit was currently functioning.Originality/value>The multi-method study shows an over-optimistic approach to becoming agile in a common cross-cultural context;insights are gained on how to optimize agile ways of organizing IT work when British IT workers collaborate with Indian IT workers. It may benefit many agile practitioners and managers working with(in) cross-culturally mixed and partly remote teams.

Challenges to agile project management during COVID-19 pandemic: an emerging economy perspective

Globally, COVID-19 pandemic has affected more than 214 countries across the world, creating uncertainty and affecting every institution and individual. The organisations recognise the need of agile projects that may offer several benefits including faster deployments, adaptability and best fit alignment to fulfill the customer needs. Implementing agile projects is the key to survive in the post pandemic situation, but emerging economies have limited scope for implementation. The present study determines the critical factors that restricts implementation of agile projects in emerging economies. The critical factors are identified from literature and validated by experts. The validated critical factors are further assessed to identify the cause-and-effect relationship using Fuzzy Decision-Making Trial and Laboratory (F-DEMATEL) method. The results of the study posit ‘Skepticism towards the new way of working’ is the most significant causal factor affecting other factors. This study is an attempt to help project managers to consider the significant factors for agile project implementation in post pandemic situation. The project managers may be benefitted from this study by considering these factors to manage challenges for agile project implementation in emerging economies. This study contributes to assess the influencing and the influenced challenging factors for agile project implementation. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.