Future software organizations – agile goals and roles
European Journal of Futures Research
Future software organizations - agile goals and roles
Petri Kettunen 0 1 2
Maarit Laanti 0 1 2
0 Nitor Delta , Finland
1 Department of Computer Science, University of Helsinki , Helsinki , Finland
2 Maarit Laanti
3 Petri Kettunen
Digital transformation is rapidly causing major, even disruptive changes in many industries. Moreover, global developments like digital platforms (cloud) and IoT create fundamentally new connections at many levels between objects, organizations and people (systems-of-systems). These are by nature dynamic and often work in real time - further increasing the complexity. These systemic changes bring up new profound questions: What are those new software-intensive systems like? How are they created and developed? Which principles should guide such organizational design? Agile enterprises are by definition proficient with such capabilities. What solutions are the current scaled agile frameworks such as SAFe and LeSS proposing, and why? In this paper, we aim to recognize the design principles of future software organizations, and discuss existing experiences from various different organizations under transformations, and the insights gained. The purpose is to systematize this by proposing a competence development impact-mapping grid for new digitalization drivers and goals with potential solutions based on our agile software enterprise transformation experiences. Our research approach is based on the resource-based and competencebased views (RBV, CBV) of organizations. We point out how most decision-making in companies will be more and more software-related when companies focus on software. This has profound impacts on organizational designs, roles and competencies. Moreover, increasing data-intensification poses new demands for more efficient organizational data processing and effective knowledge utilization capabilities. However, decisive systematic transformations of companies bring new powerful tools for steering successfully under such new business conditions. We demonstrate this via real-life examples.
Digital transformation; SAFe; LeSS; Agile enterprise; Systems thinking; Value streams
Introduction
Digital transformations are a cause of rapid and even
disruptive change in a majority of companies and future competitive
environments. Fundamentally novel models for organizations
and businesses (like Uber-type) are emerging, and traditional
companies as well must consider their structure and their roles
in achieving new business goals. Both the software producer
organization and the customer viewpoints should be
understood via comprehensive sense making. Companies now
begin to focus on software – either following strategy, or ad hoc,
when forced by competitive pressure imposed on them by
digitalization.
We view future competitive companies as agile and
sustainable, as well as more fundamentally software-based with
respect to both their outcomes (products and services) and
operations. For industrial-age companies such new principles
will require new organizational roles and goal setting.
Systemic changes (digital transformation) are complex to
achieve, but can be steered through by employing holistic
resource- and competence-based views.
When digital elements and data become increasingly
incorporated, more and more software is included both in existing
and totally new processes in different organizations. These
questions are increasingly imperative for software
development organizations to comprehend, requiring new capabilities.
Is the only problem we are solving how to achieve faster
timeto-market by improving flow, or are there also other aspects to
consider? In this paper, we disentangle this question from the
organizational resource-based view. Software development
organizations have the added need to not only understand
the new systems to be developed, but also be able to create
and evolve the strategy, software and solutions to create them.
The strategy should impact on organizations, software
systems development and human resource management (HRD).
Agile software methods (typically referred to as ‘agile
methods’ or ‘Agile’) have been utilized (‘agile
transformation’) for a long time in many software development
organizations. Essentially, they realize in software development
what agile enterprises in general aim towards. Modern
largescale agile methods and frameworks expand the basic agile
software development principles to the enterprise level.
Consequently, it is prospective to assess how these methods
and frameworks would support future companies when they
strive to become software-intensive.
Our primary focus is businesses in private sector, but also
many public sector organizations have similar considerations
when they digitalize their services.
Research propositions
In this paper, we operate with a dualistic view of software
organizations, and by software organizations we mean the
following:
1) Software firms / IT companies (...truncated)