Future software organizations – agile goals and roles

European Journal of Futures Research, Dec 2017

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 competence-based 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.

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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)


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Petri Kettunen, Maarit Laanti. Future software organizations – agile goals and roles, European Journal of Futures Research, 2017, pp. 16, Volume 5, Issue 1, DOI: 10.1007/s40309-017-0123-7