Abstract
Software developing organisations are always striving to ensure that their software projects are aligned
with their business and strategic objectives. These organisations adopt methodologies to ensure that
their software projects are delivered successfully. The methodologies could be traditional or Agile
methodologies. The focus of this research was on Agile methodologies. Despite the different
methodologies adopted by software developing organisations, software projects are still not delivering
the business value as expected. This shows that the investments made by most software developing
organisations are not bringing any return on investments, and therefore much still needs to be done to
improve software project success. One of the issues experienced by software developing organisations
is the way software project success is measured. Most traditional software projects are measured based
on the triple constraint of time, cost and scope. However, this has been found not to be enough,
particularly when this measurement is done in isolation from business objectives. There is therefore a
need for a generic conceptual framework for measuring scaled Agile success.
The objective of this study was to develop a generic conceptual framework for scaled Agile success. In
order to achieve this objective, different processes and perceived indicators from the three main levels
of Agile scaling framework were studied. These levels are the portfolio, the programme and the team.
Different processes were examined to determine whether they can help software developing
organisations achieve the perceived indicators of success at each of the three levels. This research
contributes to the body of knowledge with regard to scaled Agile, specifically on how to measure scaled
Agile success.
This research study employed a quantitative research method for data collection and analysis. Data was
collected using an online structured questionnaire and analysed using IBM SPSS 26. In order to test
and validate the theoretical conceptual framework, Pearson correlations and multiple linear regression
were used. Key findings from this research study are that there are processes currently implemented by
software developing organisations that do not contribute to the achievement of the perceived indicators.
For example, at the portfolio level, portfolio optimisation does not contribute to the achievement of any
of the perceived indicators at this level. At the programme level, continuous integration and continuous
deployment do not contribute to the achievement of any of the perceived indicators at this level. At the
team level, ‘define’ does not contribute to the achievement of any of the perceived indicators at this
level.
Even when some of the processes that do not contribute to the achievement of the perceived indicators
are not implemented, the results revealed that the portfolio level and the programme level achieved all
their perceived indicators. This means that less is done but value is still maximised. At the team level,
customer satisfaction, delivery of product/service, schedule, budget and scope met were not achieved
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at this level. The results revealed that there are missing processes that need to be identified and
implemented at the team level in order to achieve all the perceive indicators.
It was revealed that strategy and investment funding is the driving process at portfolio level, continuous
exploration drives the programme level and building, testing and deploying of a software product drive
the team level. Previous research studies revealed that SAFe is the most adopted Agile scaling
framework. However, results from this research study show that Scrum of Scrums is the most adopted
Agile scaling framework. Scrum remains the most preferred method implemented in Agile software
projects.