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Organizational Debt in Large-Scale Hybrid Agile Software Development: A Case Study on Coordination Mechanisms

Abstract

Software development is a complex human-centered activity, increasingly complicated by agile organizations scaling and adopting hybrid work. While technical debt has been extensively studied, other forms of debt-organizational, process, cultural, and social-have received less attention. We conducted a case study using ten semi-structured interviews, observations, and document analysis to identify coordination mechanisms used in large-scale hybrid agile. We identified organizational debt challenges such as a lack of shared mental models, team coordination, team cohesion, and team learning. Also, the hybrid working arrangement was found to create tension between increased individual autonomy and team objectives, as well as between team autonomy and inter-team coordination. We found 23 coordination mechanisms that the teams used to address challenges in their organization. We propose that implementing many of these mechanisms may help manage organizational debt.
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Category

Academic chapter

Language

English

Affiliation

  • SINTEF Digital / Software Engineering, Safety and Security
  • University of Oslo

Year

2023

Publisher

Springer

Book

Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming – Workshops: XP 2022 Workshops, Copenhagen, Denmark, June 13–17, 2022, and XP 2023 Workshops, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, June 13–16, 2023, Revised Selected Papers

ISBN

9783031485503

Page(s)

75 - 84

View this publication at Norwegian Research Information Repository