Abstract
Scaled Agile are gradually becoming popular frameworks and many contemporary organisations are adopting them to address all their Information Technology (IT) and software development projects that are of a large-scale nature, as opposed to using the traditional agile methods for small projects. The scaled agile frameworks are predominantly used in the IT sector, but literature indicates that other sectors or industries are slowly starting to warm up to these frameworks.
The research paper analyses the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), which literature shows as a framework that is widely adopted by a number of large organisations and the software industry, which is excessively affectionate of the SAFe framework. However, literature indicates that there is limited scientific research on the benefits and challenges of the adoption of SAFe.
The research study looks into the adoption, usage, benefits and challenges of SAFe in the financial institutions. Moreover, the study also tests a conceptual framework that was developed as a guideline on the adoption and use of the SAFe framework in financial institutions.
Data were collected by means of a structured questionnaire survey, which was distributed through social media platforms, such as LinkedIn. Data from only 108 valid responses were used. The researcher made use of quantitative research methods to analyse the data, whereby exploratory factor analysis as well as frequencies and descriptives were used. The research tested the benefits and challenges provided by literature, to see if they also apply in financial institutions or if different benefits and challenges arise. It also tests the conceptual framework that has been developed from literature, to see if it works. The conceptual framework was developed through the usage of literature and then it was tested by incorporating the conceptual framework in the survey, whereby participants were able to indicate which options were more suited for their financial institution and the empirical evidence also provided the results in terms to see if the conceptual framework had any impact and if it did indicate any differences between the evidence and literature. Moreover, the research also looked into the reliability and validity of the results.
For the results, a quantitative research method is adopted to analyse the data, whereby the results indicated that they are reliable and valid to be discussed and reported on. Furthermore, frequencies and descriptive statistical analysis techniques were used, and these eventually led to some results requiring an empirical factor analysis to be implemented, due to the outcome of the frequencies. The majority of the results obtained a Sig. value of 0 and the coefficients of the majority of the results were above 0.3. This allowed for the Principal Axis Factoring (PAF) extraction method to be implemented to further analyse the results to achieve the Communalities Extraction.
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In addition, the study found that the top three benefits were in contrast with the top 3 benefits derived from literature. Furthermore, the study’s empirical top 3 benefits evidence were indicated as “Increased alignment between teams and business units”, “Improved visibility” and “Increase in release frequency”. Consequently, the study also found that the top 3 challenges were in contrast with the top 3 literature challenges. As per the empirical evidence from the study, the top 3 challenges were indicated as “Challenges with change of roles”, Struggle to shift from the traditional waterfall culture” and “Resistance towards accepting change”.
Lastly, the study also indicated how SAFe is being adopted in financial institutions through testing the conceptual framework. The empirical evidence indicated that “Lack or absence of Executive Support” in financial institutions was the most agreed to discontinuation factor which financial institutions faced when adopting SAFe, indicating that the empirical evidence was in agreement with literature. Consequently, the study also found that financial institutions preferred to use the “Development Value Stream”, which was in contrast with literature.
Keywords: SAFe, SAFe Adoption, SAFe Usage, Benefits, Challenges, Financial Institutions.