exploring the role of people capability maturity model and ...file/… · exploring the role of...

Exploring the Role of People Capability Maturity Model and

Identifying People-Related Critical Success Factors in Large-Scale

Organization with Agile Practice

DISSERTATION

of the University of St. Gallen,

School of Management,

Economics, Law, Social Science

and International Affairs

to obtain the title of

Doctor of Philosophy in Management

submitted by

Alice Jing Lee

from

The United Kingdom

Approved on the application of

Prof. Dr. Andreas Herrmann

and

Prof. Dr. Torsten Tomczak

Dissertation no.4673

Printy Druckerei, München 2017

The University of St. Gallen, School of Management, Economics, Law, Social

Sciences and International Affairs hereby consents to the printing of the present

dissertation, without hereby expressing any opinion on the views herein expressed.

St. Gallen, May 29, 2017

The President:

Prof. Dr. Thomas Bieger

For my parents, my brother, and my boyfriend

I

Acknowledgements

I wish to express my warmest gratitude to all those persons whose comments,

questions, critics, support and encouragement, personal and academic, have left a

mark on this work.

Firstly, I would like to offer my sincerest gratitude to the professors for their

guidance throughout my doctoral study. Special thanks belong to my academic

supervisor, Prof. Dr. Andreas Herrmann, who gave me the opportunity to focus on

the topics which genuinely intrigue me. I would also like to thank Prof. Dr. Torsten

Tomczak for his co-supervision of my dissertation. Furthermore, I appreciate the

patient guidance, valuable advice and generous support by Prof. Dr. Gerald Häubl

during my PhD studies.

I acknowledge the organization that supported my work on this dissertation. I would

like to thank the participants for sharing their insights and their precious time in this

study. Their constructive ideas and advices, interest, and enthusiasm have allowed

me to complete my research successfully. Many thanks for the time, generosity and

valuable hits.

Lastly, but most importantly, I would like to thank my family for their love and

encouragement of my pursuit of a PhD in Switzerland. This dissertation would not

have been written without their unconditional and immense support. My gratitude to

them is beyond words. I would also like to thank my boyfriend, Licheng, for his

understanding and love. His support and patience during the ups and downs of my

study were invaluable. This dissertation would not have been possible without him.

II

Abstract

Due to the dynamic and complex business and technology environments, it is

becoming increasingly challenging for software teams to respond to changes in

customer requirements and technology. Although there is an accelerating trend for

organizations to move towards agile approaches in order to respond to the changing

requirements, maintain flexibility, improve processes and increase competitiveness,

other organizations are skeptical about the benefits of adopting this methodology. In

contrast to the traditional waterfall approach, agile methodology puts more emphasis

on people factors and stress the benefits of collaboration and encourage

communication between various project stakeholders. Therefore, having the right

people in agile projects is the most critical requirement for project success.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the practices implemented in large-scale

organization to improve workforce competencies and identify the people-related

critical success factors. As people-related issues are considered to be the most

important factor influencing agile project success, a framework should be applied to

help the organization to effectively address critical people issues. Face-to-face

interviews are conducted with employees working in a large organization with IT

responsibility to identify the challenges faced when managing IT projects in agile

approach, solutions to these problems, and the criteria of employing staff. People

Capability Maturity Model (PCMM) is applied to examine how this framework can

act as a roadmap for an organization to better manage its workforce. PCMM could

help the organization to understand the importance of the practices currently

implemented, find out the problems it faced which prevent it from reaching the

highest maturity level of the model, and provide possible solutions for improvement.

Results showed that due to the strategic constraints and misalignment of standards,

there is still room for improvement in the current practices. In order to achieve

success in agile projects, it is critical for the company to strengthen the practices by

empowering and integrating workforce competencies, and to apply the practices in

the past experience in similar situation.

III

Zusammenfassung

Wegen dem immer mehr dynamischen und komplexen Umfeld in Geschäftsleben

und Technik, steigen die Herausforderungen für Software-Teams in Bezug auf

Reaktion auf Veränderungen bei Kundenanforderungen und Technik. Einerseits

existiert bei Unternehmen eine Tendenz in Richtung agile Methoden, um auf

veränderte Anforderungen zu reagieren, Flexibilität zu erhalten, Prozesse zu

verbessern und Konkurrenzfähigkeit zu erhalten. Andererseits sehen andere

Unternehmen die Vorteile für den Einsatz dieser Methode skeptisch. Im Gegensatz

zum traditionellen Wasserfall-Modell, legen die agile Methoden den Schwerpunkt

auf den Faktor Mensch, betont die Vorzüge von Zusammenarbeit und fördert die

Kommunikation zwischen den verschiedenen Projekt-Akteuren. Daher ist es von

entscheidender Kriterium für den Erfolg, die richtigen Personen in agilen Projekten

zu besitzen.

Der Gegenstand dieses Papers sind die Erforschung von Praktiken, die in großen

Organisationen zur Verbesserung der Arbeitsleistung umgesetzt wurden, und die

Identifizierung von personen-bezogenen kritischen Erfolgsfaktoren. Aufgrund der

Überlegung, dass personen-bezogene Aspekte als wichtigster Faktor für den Erfolg

agiler Projekt beitragen, sollte ein Konzept angewandt werden, um Unternehmen zu

helfen, kritische Personal-Themen effektiv anzugehen. Persönliche Gespräche mit

Mitarbeitern in großen Unternehmen mit Verantwortung im IT-Bereich wurden

geführt, um Herausforderungen beim Management von IT-Projekten in agilen

Ansatz, Lösungen von Problemen, und Eignungskriterien des angestellten Personals

zu erkennen.

Das People Capability Maturity Model (PCMM) wird angewandt, um zu

untersuchen, wie dieses Modell als Roadmap für Unternehmen ein besseres

Management der Arbeitsleistung erreicht. PCMM kann Unternehmen helfen, die

Bedeutung von bereits eingesetzten Praktiken zu verstehen, auftretende Probleme,

die die höchste Stufe des Modells verhindern, zu finden und mögliche

Verbesserungslösungen bereitzustellen. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass wegen

strategischen Grenzen und Falschauslegung von Standards Verbesserungspotential

der bestehenden Praktiken besteht. Um Erfolg in agilen Projekten zu erreichen, ist es

für das Unternehmen entscheidend, die Praktiken durch Erhöhung und Integration

von Arbeitsleistung und -kompetenz zu stärken und die Praktiken aus vorherigen

Erfahrungen in ähnlichen Situation anzuwenden.

IV

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 - Introduction .................................................................................. 2

1.1 Background....................................................................................... 2

1.2 Purpose of the Study ......................................................................... 3

1.3 Research Scope ................................................................................. 5

1.4 Research Questions ........................................................................... 6

1.5 Significance of the Study ................................................................... 7

1.6 Structure of the Dissertation ............................................................. 8

Chapter 2 - Literature Review ....................................................................... 12

2.1 Agile Software Product Development .............................................. 12

2.2 Agile Models in Large-Scale Organizations ..................................... 15

2.3 Challenges in Coordination and Communication ............................. 16

2.4 People Management in Agile Software Organizations ...................... 18

2.5 Change in Staffing Requirements with Agile Practice ...................... 19

2.6 The People Capability Maturity Model (PCMM) ............................ 21

2.6.1 Characteristics and Objectives of PCMM .................................. 21

2.6.2 Structure of PCMM ................................................................... 22

Chapter 3 - Research Methodology ................................................................ 30

3.1 Background of the Company ........................................................... 30

3.2 Data collection ................................................................................. 31

V

3.3 Data analysis ................................................................................... 31

3.3.1 Open coding ............................................................................... 32

3.3.2 Axial coding ............................................................................... 32

3.3.3 Selective coding .......................................................................... 32

Chapter 4 - Results and Analysis ................................................................... 35

4.1 Phase 1: Conceptual Framework ..................................................... 35

4.2 Phase 2: Case Study Interview ......................................................... 46

4.2.1 Level 2: Managed ...................................................................... 46

4.2.1.1 Staffing ........................................................................................ 46

4.2.1.2 Communication and Coordination .................................................. 47

4.2.1.3 Work Environment ........................................................................ 47

4.2.1.4 Performance Management .............................................................. 48

4.2.1.5 Training and Development ............................................................. 48

4.2.1.6 Compensation ............................................................................... 48

4.2.2 Level 3: Defined ......................................................................... 49

4.2.2.1 Competency Analysis .................................................................... 49

4.2.2.2 Workforce Planning ...................................................................... 49

4.2.2.3 Competency Development ............................................................. 49

4.2.2.4 Career Development ...................................................................... 50

4.2.2.5 Competency-Based Practices .......................................................... 50

VI

4.2.2.6 Workgroup Development ............................................................... 50

4.2.2.7 Participatory Culture ..................................................................... 51

4.2.3 Level 4: Predictable ................................................................... 51

4.2.3.1 Competency Integration ................................................................. 51

4.2.3.2 Empowered Workgroups ............................................................... 52

4.2.3.3 Competency-Based Assets ............................................................. 52

4.2.3.4 Quantitative Performance Management ........................................... 52

4.2.3.5 Organizational Capability Management ........................................... 53

4.2.3.6 Mentoring ..................................................................................... 53

4.2.4 Level 5: Optimization ................................................................ 53

4.2.4.1 Continuous Capability Improvement ............................................... 54

4.2.4.2 Organizational Performance Alignment ........................................... 55

4.2.4.3 Continuous Workforce Innovation .................................................. 55

4.2.5 Summary of the Case Study ....................................................... 56

Chapter 5 - Discussion ................................................................................... 59

5.1 Limitation and Future Work ........................................................... 59

5.2 Implications for Research and Practice ........................................... 62

Chapter 6 - Conclusion .................................................................................. 66

Reference ....................................................................................................... 68

Curriculum Vitae .......................................................................................... 78

VII

List of Abbreviations

ASD Adaptive Software Development

CMM Capability Maturity Model

PCMM People Capability Maturity Model

XP Extreme Programming

VIII

List of Figures

Figure 1: Dissertation Structure ................................................................................ 10

Figure 2: Process Thread in the People CMM (Curtis et al., 2009) .......................... 23

Figure 3: Structure of PCMM (Curtis et al., 2009, P.59) ......................................... 24

Figure 4: Relationships among Maturity Level 2 process areas ............................... 25




Figure 8: Research model proposed by Chow & Cao (2008) ................................... 36

Figure 9: Proposed Conceptual Model ..................................................................... 45

IX

List of Tables

Table 1: The values and principles defined behind the agile manifesto ................... 14

Table 2: The principles underlying PCMM (Curtis et al., 2003, P. 6) ...................... 22

Table 3: Criteria of a good metric or diagnostic (Hartmann & Dymond, 2006) Error!

Bookmark not defined.

Table 4: Summary of the success attributes in software projects ............................. 43

1

Chapter 1

Introduction

Chapter 1 - Introduction

2


1.1 Background

The influence of individual personality and capability on IT tasks and processes has

raised concerns in the software engineering field in the past few decades.

Requirements of specific skills and knowledge related to the job nature are

frequently emphasized. However, the importance of personality in the job market

cannot be ignored. Through a historical analysis of software engineering personality

types, it is found that there is a change in the proportions of software engineers

possessing a specific personality type (Varona et at., 2012). While the computer

professionals were almost overwhelmingly represented by introverts in the past, the

trend has been reversed nowadays due to the increase of diverse activities in the

software industry. Due to the increasing complexity of IT projects, excellent

communication skills and teamwork are also required. Since different software

developers have different personalities and skills, it is a challenge to allocate the

employees to the most suitable positions and tasks in IT projects.

Waterfall model and agile methodology are commonly used in the software

development process. The waterfall model is an easy yet powerful method of

software development. The phases are arranged and could help even the new

developers to understand the overall picture of the process of developing software

through the software development life cycle. However, since it does not entertain

any change in requirements and therefore, makes any subsequent functionality

changes extremely difficult and expensive, there is a trend to move to agile

methodology. Agile acknowledges requirements’ uncertainty or rapidly changing

market conditions by working in short iterations to deliver incremental business

value. This is facilitated by small, cross-functional teams that combine the

complementary skills and experience of business and IT people. Since both

methodologies have their pros and cons, the use of the models are dependent on the


3

types of project. The waterfall model is suitable for the development of software that

are already stable and when the time frame is long enough. On the other hand, when

the customer is not clear about his/her requirements or expectations from the end

product, adopting agile method would be a better choice.

Since the above two mentioned software development methodologies have different

implementation characteristics, different personality criteria on software developers

are posed when the IT projects adopt different software development approaches. In

the case of waterfall approach, since it is less adaptable to changing business

requirements, there is a great emphasis and effort on prescriptive process or transient

project control documentation. In order to reduce the chance of requirement change,

it is important to have a clear picture of the development process, duration and cost

before the start of the project. Therefore, employees are required to be decisive, self-

regimented, purposeful, and exacting. They work best when they can plan their work

and follow their plans. They may like to work in a steady pace, get things settled and

finished, and may dislike to interrupt the project they are working. For agile

methodology, it is crucial to have regular communication with customers to

understand their needs and with colleagues to discuss the change of implementation

requirements. Therefore, having good communication skill is an important criterion

for software developers working with agile IT project. They are more willing to face

changing situations, and are more empirical, flexible, adaptable, and tolerant. They

would love to have challenges and dislike doing the same thing repeatedly.

1.2 Purpose of the Study

The objective of this research is to find out the criteria of employing workforce and

the corresponding workforce practices that should be implemented, in particular

software developers, in different types of IT projects in large company. A model

which consists of various process areas concerning the practices on workforce

management is applied. The two software development methodologies of the IT


4

projects, waterfall model and agile method, are focused. Employees working in the

department of IT in a large-scale organization are invited for interviews. The content

of the interview included identifying different types of software developers, the

challenges they faced when dealing with IT projects, the tasks of project, the

individual requirements/skills on software developers, the application of people

management practices, etc. Regarding the main focus of this research – capability

and personality, the five-factor model (FFM) of personality are used as an indicator

of the assessment in the interview. It is a hierarchical organization of personality

traits in terms of five basic dimensions: Extraversion, Agreeableness,

Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness to Experience.

It is expected that employees working with the waterfall approach contribute more

to the factors Agreeableness, Conscientiousness and Neuroticism, while the

employees working with the agile approach are more preferable to be towards the

factors Extraversion and Openness to Experience. The reasons for the expected

results are that waterfall methodology requires less interaction with other people.

They would prefer to have a realistic idea of the duration and process of the project,

tend to be firm-minded and behave in the given way. However, when one works

with the agile project, he/she needs to communicate frequently with different people

and must not be anxious and vulnerable. Since the requirements change more often,

they dislike taking time for precision and routine details, but are patient with

complicated and adapt well with changing situations.

Since agile methodology emphasizes the importance of people-related issues, the

workforce qualities including amicability, talent, personality, skill, and

communication become a major concern for an agile team (Cockburn & Highsmith,

2001; McHugh et al., 2011; Young et al., 2005). Agile project teams focus on

increasing individual, team collaboration, and organizational levels (Cockburn &

Highsmith, 2001). It is found that an organizational culture or value system may

exist throughout a larger social grouping (O'Reilly et al., 1991), and the


5

organizational climate interacts with individual personality in influencing job

satisfaction and performance (Downey et al., 1975). In order to move towards

strategic human capital management, a framework is needed which provides a

theoretical foundation to improve their management processes and to develop the

workforce (Wright & Snell, 1998). In this paper, the People Capability Maturity

Model (PCMM) is applied, describing how the framework could contribute to a

large-scale organization with agile practice and what the organization has to do in

order to achieve a higher maturity level which leads to project success (Curtis et al.,

2009).

1.3 Research Scope

To enable project success, software project managers must know the importance of

the workforce planning. Having the right number of people of right competence, in

the right place and right time to do the right tasks are the objectives of workforce

management. Implementing proper workforce management practices in an

organization can help individuals to be more involved with their competence and

experience, and facilitate better decisions by the managers. Organizations which use

workforce analytics can increase the involvement of workforce the best and thrive in

difficult conditions (Ringo, 2007). Therefore, people-related factors which are

necessary to lead to agile process success are investigated in this dissertation. Agile

software project success can be evaluated in various methods. A thorough literature

review of the metrics of project success is conducted.

As large-scale organizations usually have clear structures and guidelines when

carrying out projects, and the complexity of the projects is higher, standard waterfall

approach is believed to be the traditional approach in software development.

However, since agile approach also has a lot of benefits when compared to the

waterfall approach in large-size projects, it is also widely used. The agile approach

is more flexible since it embraces changes. It is feasible for the stakeholders to see


6

the interim results and do not need to wait until the end to realize the values of the

project. However, the application of these two different approaches requires

different competence and personalities. In this research, the necessary skills,

knowledges, experiences, and personalities of software developers and software

project managers will be examined. The people-related challenges and critical

success factors when doing software projects in agile approach are also analyzed.

The People Capability Maturity Model (PCMM) is used to analyze the maturity

level of the company being investigated (Curtis et al., 2009). This model is specially

applied to effectively add values to the human resources in the organization. It

generally enables organizations to improve the competencies and skills of the

workforce, and provide suggested solutions and practices to solve the existing

people-related problems. By examining the current situations of the company,

PCMM helps to assess the practices and policies which can be beneficial in leading

to project success, and at the same time, it can help to discover the challenges it

faced.

1.4 Research Questions

This dissertation will examine the following research questions:

1. What are the main people-related challenges in large-scale agile software

development?

2. What are the people-related critical success factors in large-scale agile

projects in achieving project success?

3. How could PCMM serve as guideline to help an organization to address

the challenges faced and to provide potential solutions to the issues?


7

1.5 Significance of the Study

This study is expected to contribute to the literature in agile software development in

several ways. First, while prior agile development literature examines the critical

success factors of software projects in large-scale organizations from different

perspectives, the research in this dissertation concentrates on investigating people-

related challenges and critical success factors. As people-related issues are

emphasized in agile projects (Cockburn & Highsmith, 2001), it is important to

identify the difference of people factors required in a project by comparing the

application of waterfall approach and agile approach. Therefore, this research

attempts to integrate various factors from existing literature and examine the

influence of these attributes on agile project performance. This could provide insight

into the management of software project and allow project managers to better

understand the possible elements leading to project success.

Secondly, this paper is expected to contribute to research by examining empirically

the way to apply People Capability Maturity Model (PCMM), showing examples of

real-life practices to achieve the goals of various process areas, and how the model

could help the organization to understand the challenges it faced and provide

suggestions for potential improvement. After analyzing the data collected from the

interviews, the practices implemented at the company are matched with the process

areas of the maturity levels of PCMM. This approach can help the company to better

understand their current situations from the human resources perspective. Hence this

study stands to fill the research gap by applying theory into practices in large-scale

agile software projects.

Thirdly, since it is crucial for the project manager to know the way to measure and

control the project outcomes and results, concrete performance metrics are necessary

to be defined. As the measurement of project performance and success is defined in

various way, this dissertation integrates the findings from existing literature to


8

provide an overview for researchers and project managers to understand the

possibility of using different measurement metrics under different situations. The

study results can be used for an effective assessment of project performance and a

better understanding of the reasons behind the performance results.

Fourthly, the criteria of people-related factors leading to the success of an agile

project have been identified and assessed through four dimensions in this

dissertation, namely capability, personality, motivation, and training. A research

model is developed based on these four attributes and the implementation of people-

related practices introduced in the PCMM. Thus, this dissertation aims to contribute

to research and practice by providing the guideline for project managers to

categorize the characteristics of each employee (e.g. skills, knowledge, and

personality), and arrange suitable people-related practices based on these features to

increase the possibility of success in agile projects.

1.6 Structure of the Dissertation

This dissertation is divided into six chapters. The structure is outlined in Figure 1.

The first chapter provides a general overview of the background and purpose of the

study, research scope, research questions, as well as the significance of the study.

Chapter 2 presents the theoretical background of agile software product

development and people-related issues of agile approaches in large-scale

organizations. Challenges and critical success factors of agile projects are also

reviewed.

Chapter 3 describes the research approach used in this study. Face-to-face, semi-

structured interviews are conducted to empirically investigate the agile practices in

software projects. The processes of data collection are elaborated.


9

The results and procedures of data analysis are reported in Chapter 4. The software

Atlas.ti is used to analyze the data in the study. A research model is proposed in this

chapter. The analysis shows the agile practices implemented in the company and

matches the business activities with the process threads of PCMM to determine the

maturity level reached by the company.

Discussions including the implications for research and practice, limitations, and

future work are presented in Chapter 5.

Chapter 6 concludes the dissertation by summarizing the background of the study,

the research methodology and findings, and the contributions to agile project

management.

10


• Background

• Purpose of the Study

• Research Scope

• Research Questions

• Significance of the Study

• Structure of the Dissertation

Chapter 2 – Literature Review

• Agile Software Product Development

• Agile Models in Large-Scale Organizations

• Challenges in Coordination and Communication

• People Management in Software Organizations

• Change in Staffing Requirements with Agile Practice

• The People Capability Maturity Model (PCMM)

Chapter 3 – Research Methodology

• Background of the Company

• Data Collection

• Data Analysis

Chapter 4- Results and Analysis

• Phase 1: Conceptual Framework

• Phase 2: Case Study

Chapter 5 - Discussion

• Limitations and Future Works

• Implications for Research and Practice

Chapter 6 - Conclusion

Figure 1: Dissertation Structure

11

Chapter 2

Literature Review

Chapter 2 - Literature Review

12


2.1 Agile Software Product Development

One of the biggest challenges of the traditional plan-based approach is that it

assumes all the project requirements could be clearly defined at the beginning of the

project (Cocco et al., 2011). It would be very costly if the requirements need to be

changed when the project is in progress, and therefore, adjustments to the

requirements as needed cannot be easily made (Szalvav, 2004). However, the

problem of undefined, changing, and emerging requirements can be addressed by

adopting agile software development approach. Extreme programming (XP) (Beck,

2000), Scrum (Schwaber, 2004), Kanban (Sugimori et al., 1977), Lean development

(Poppendieck, 2007), Adaptive Software Development (ASD) (Highsmith, 2013)

are the examples of agile methodologies for managing product development.

A study found that increased uncertainty of the software product market and the

technology will lead to the use of more controlled-flexible approaches, and two key

boundary conditions, time pressure and project size, could influence the

relationships between uncertain environments and flexible work methods (Harris et

al., 2009). IT project team capabilities and trust-mediated organizational control

could address the problems of project uncertainty and project completion urgency

(Goh et al., 2013). In order to address the challenges faced by software developers

using the traditional approach, “Agile Manifesto” is introduced which defines four

values and twelve principles that form the foundation of the agile movement (Beck

et al., 2001; Fowler & Highsmith, 2001) (See table 1).

In comparison to traditional software development approach, agile methods are

adaptive rather than predictive. They focus on providing values to customers and

support requirement variability (Boehm, 2002b). It emphasizes the importance of

customer involvement within the entire software development process, from writing


13

user stories, participating in the discussion of product features, to providing rapid

feedback regularly to the development team (Fraser et al., 2004; Lohan et al., 2011).

Much of the agility relies on the tacit knowledge embodied in the team, rather than

writing the knowledge down in plans (Boehm, 2002a). Another major difference

between these two methodologies is that agile approach is more people-oriented

rather than process-related (Beck et al., 2001). It is noted that human issue in agile

projects is a critical factor in project success. Moreover, the agile methods promote

the cohesion of team members and developer and customer interaction (Ceschi et al.,

2005). Since teams are self-organized and empowered in an agile environment

(Martin, 2003), agile processes are designed to capitalize on each individual and

each team’s unique strengths to ensure high-performance working environments

(Cockburn & Highsmith, 2001). Therefore, the application of agile methods

increases team productivity and employee satisfaction, and at the same time,

minimizes the waste in redundant meetings and documentations (Rigby et al., 2016).


14

The Four Core Values of Agile Manifesto

1. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

2. Working software over comprehensive documentation

3. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

4. Responding to change over following a plan

The Twelve Principles behind the Agile Manifesto

1. Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous

delivery of valuable software.

2. Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile

processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage.

3. Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of

months, with a preference to the shorter time scale.

4. Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the

project.

5. Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment

and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.

6. The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and

within a development team is face-to-face conversation.

7. Working software is the primary measure of progress.

8. Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors,

developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace

indefinitely.

9. Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances

agility.

10. Simplicity – the art of maximizing the amount of work not done – is

essential.

11. The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-

organizing teams.

12. At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective,

then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.

Table 1: The values and principles defined behind the agile manifesto

(Beck et al., 2001)


15

2.2 Agile Models in Large-Scale Organizations

In recent years, the agile approach has proven to be effective in achieving project

success and have gained increasing popularity around the world (Dybå & Dingsøyr,

2008). The original premise of agile methodologies is for small teams to work more

closely to effectively produce high standard projects (Kettunen & Laanti, 2008).

Iterative and incremental development are key practices in agile development

methodologies. Agile teams have frequent consultant with customers to have small

and frequent releases (Beck et al., 2001), and therefore agile methods enable an

organization to deliver quickly and change quickly (Boehm, 2002a). The agile

approaches perform better than the traditional software development methodologies

which are found to be too cumbersome, bureaucratic, and inflexible. Therefore, the

agile methods can help the organizations in terms of cost saving (Lindvall et al.,

2004).

Due to the success implementation of agile methodologies in small-scale projects

and organizations, more and more large projects are getting interested in applying

the agile approach in order to increase the competitiveness in the dynamic changing

business environment (Dingsøyr et al., 2012). However, because of the wide-ranging

impacts of every change in large-scale projects, it is more difficult for agile

methodologies to be implemented in larger teams and organizations (Kettunen &

Laanti, 2008). There are often various issues involved if the project is implemented

in a large-scale organization in which large number of members from different

departments and organizations can be affected. Therefore, it is difficult for large

projects to be truly independent.

Since there are different characteristics between large and small projects/

organizations, organizations should adjust the agile model which fits the features of

the projects to solve the challenges faced. Research has searched the combination of

agile and traditional elements (Boehm & Turner, 2003). Adaptive Software


16

Development (ASD) proposes the building of collaborative practices such as Joint

Application Development (JAD) which bind teams together (Highsmith, 2013). JAD

is developed at IBM which enhances cross-team collaboration in agile multi-team

software development organizations. Highsmith (2013) defines JAD as “a facilitated

workshop that brings together cross-functional groups to build collaborative

relationships capable of producing high quality deliverables during the life of the

project”. Furthermore, the requirements (re)prioritization and domain knowledge

sharing in large-scale organizations with agile practice can be different than that of

small organizations (Daneva et al., 2013). Hence, it is always important to have

suitable adaptation for effective use of the agile methods (Sarker & Sarker, 2009).

2.3 Challenges in Coordination and Communication

Coordination and communication in large organizations have been studied for

several decades (Kahkonen, 2004). Although agile development can reduce the

development time in a small- or medium-size project where teams develop software

with few iterations, the weaknesses of the agile approach are more influential in

large-size projects. In complex projects, it is more difficult to establish formal line

of communication if agile approach is used. It is often the case that the project team

members are distributed at different sites, and therefore, it is difficult to synchronize

work between sites and process alignment (Herbsleb & Moitra, 2001; Sutherland et

al., 2007). The use of agile methodologies can also bring the problems due to the

lack of team cohesion and shared view of goals. There is limited ability for the

control of the activities when teams are remotely located (Sarker & Sarker, 2009). In

large organizations, there are specific organization policies which need to be

interacted with and followed, and hence, pose challenges for team members to

coordinate effectively (Kahkonen, 2004; Kettunen & Laanti, 2008). In addition,

complexity, innovativeness, and criticality of software systems can all contribute to

technical challenge (Mookerjee & Chiang, 2002). All these factors prohibit the agile

methodologies to be used efficiently.


17

Self-organizing teams are the heart of agile software development (Highsmith &

Fowler, 2001; Martin, 2003). However, one of the challenges of agile development

is the building of self-organizing team. Although it is stated in one of the principles

in Agile Manifesto that “the best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge

from self-organizing teams”, there is often misconception that self-organizing teams

are free from management control (Hoda et al., 2010). In large-scale project,

decisions are usually made by different stakeholders, but self-organizing teams are

supposed to make decisions themselves (Beck et al., 2001). So it is difficult to strike

a balance between large-scale organization / project and the self-organizing team

which stemmed from the agile process model idea (Kettunen & Laanti, 2008). The

effectiveness of the agile practice depends heavily on the intensive interaction

between customers and developers (Ramesh et al., 2010). The decision-making

processes, problem-solving strategies, relationship amongst stakeholders, and

planning and control mechanisms can be influenced by the differences in

organizational culture and individual work attitudes (Nerur et al., 2005).

Software documentation forms the basis for all communication of different

stakeholders relating to a software project (Rüping, 2005). In agile development,

minimal documentation is advocated and extensive documentation is considered to

be a waste (Beck et al., 2001). In large organizations/ projects which a lot of issues

and people are involved, software requirements are more understandable and are

more clearly communicated to customers if sufficient documentation is available

(Lindvall et al., 2004). Since large organizations may often experience personnel

turnover, unavailability of appropriate customer representatives, or the application’s

growing complexity, the lack of documentation might cause a variety of problem

(Cao & Ramesh, 2008). It is often necessary for the organizations to scale the

software, evolve the application over time, and induct new members into the

development team (Cao & Ramesh, 2008). Having sufficient documentation can

help organizations to enhance the communication between stakeholders more


18

efficiently and therefore, can estimate cost and schedule for the entire project

accurately (Cao & Ramesh, 2008).

2.4 People Management in Agile Software Organizations

People are core to any kind of software development projects and organizations, but

in an agile team, they are considered to be particularly important (McHugh et al.,

2012). A human-centered approach is applied as the development techniques in agile

development (Beck et al., 2001). Software engineering is done “of the people, by the

people, and for the people.” (Boehm & Turner, 2003). Amicability, talent, skill, and

communication are found to be the emphasis on people factors in an agile project

(Cockburn & Highsmith, 2001). Boehm & Turner (2003) presented five areas where

people issues are critical to successful software development: staffing, culture,

values, communications, and expectation management. Agile methods generally

exhibit more frequent interactions between people, and therefore, mutual trust is

essential for team members to work interdependently (McHugh et al., 2012). Team

members feel comfortable to open up, take appropriate risks and expose

vulnerabilities only when they feel safe with each other (Bandow, 2001). To cope

with the challenges of building mutual trust, organizations need to develop shared

goals, form social relationship embeddedness, and initiate influence strategies (Chen

et al., 2014). It is found that interpersonal trust can influence the amount of

knowledge sharing amongst the team which can in turn positively influence the team

effectiveness (Pinjani & Palvia, 2013; Park & Lee, 2014).

In Scrum Alliance, self-management is emphasized as the center of agile people

management. People management is divided into four levels, manage myself,

manage an individual, manage a team, and manage and organization. People are

more important than processes (Cockburn & Highsmith, 2001). In order to promote

team bonding and self-organization in agile development, individual competence

and team competence need to be focused since agile processes are designed to


19

capitalize on each individual and each team’s unique strengths (Cockburn &

Highsmith, 2001). Standish Group (2001) found that “user involvement” and

“experienced project manager” are the second and third most important factors

influencing the project success. In agile development, frequent interaction and

communication with customers are needed. Understanding customer needs is crucial

in achieving the success of project and teamwork is of the highest importance in

agile projects (Beck et al., 2001). An investigation showed that the most important

quality of a developer is the ability to work in a team (Ceschi et al., 2005).

Therefore, when agile methodologies are applied in the projects, the ability to

manage people should not be neglected.

2.5 Change in Staffing Requirements with Agile Practice

In agile software development, human issues have been considered to be one of the

most important components which include amicability, talent, skill, and

communication (Cockburn & Highsmith, 2001). Due to the difference in

characteristics between the two software development approaches, there is a change

in staffing requirements as the information technology trends are moving closer to

agile methods. Since people are considered to be the first-order factor in project

success, getting the right people is fundamental in agile development (Augustine et

al., 2005). A study found that one of the biggest challenges faced by agile

companies is the lack of qualified staff when compared with the companies with

plan-based approach (Ceschi et al., 2005). Agile teams are characterized by self-

organization and intense collaboration, within and across organizational boundaries.

The teams must share the common goal, have mutual trust and respect, and be ready

to meet new challenges (Cockburn & Highsmith, 2001). Extensive collaboration and

communication with different people are fundamental in agile software development,

and the organizations involving in an agile study identified intensive communication

as the most important agile practice (Cao & Ramesh, 2008; Hoda et al., 2011;

Ramesh et al., 2006). Communication mechanisms of agile project teams are


20

emphasized in previous research (Hummel et al., 2013). Moreover, team members

are empowered with more discretionary and decision-making powers (Nerur et al.,

2005).

Since there is an accelerating rate of change in technology, the technical knowledge

becomes obsolete within a short period of time. Furthermore, knowledge needs to be

effectively integrated and transferred from team members working in different

phases and activities (Joshi et al., 2007). Therefore, developers need to keep

themselves updated with latest technology, and to trust and rely on current

developers (Fowler, 2001; McHugh et al., 2011). As knowledge sharing plays a very

important role in the agile project success, it is a prerequisite for project members to

be able to manage their skills and be coordinated with the team to enhance team

performance. Administrative coordination and expertise coordination are the two

different coordination processes which are considered to be the key to effective

teams (Faraj & Sproull, 2000). While administrative coordination is required to

assign tasks, allocate resources, and integrate outputs, expertise coordination is

necessary for the team to recognize where expertise is located, needed, and accessed

(Faraj & Sproull, 2000).

Regarding the role of IT project managers, while the traditional management was

considered to be governing and controlling, the agile project managers need to have

the ability to set direction, align people, obtain resources, and motivate the teams

(Anderson et al., 2003). Since the exercise of control cannot be done easily in

today’s complex development environment, project managers must be able to

manage the project in uncertain environment by balancing the restrictiveness of

scope boundaries with opportunities for dynamic feedback (Harris et al., 2009).

Leadership in self-organizing teams needs to be light-weight and adaptive

(Augustine et al., 2005). They need to be able to deal with uncertainty, to guide the

rapid development of flexible and adaptive systems of high value (Highsmith, 2003).


21

2.6 The People Capability Maturity Model (PCMM)

2.6.1 Characteristics and Objectives of PCMM

The People Capability Maturity Model (PCMM) is a framework that helps

organizations successfully address critical people issues. It uses the process maturity

model of the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) as a basis and focuses on

continually improving the capability of an organization’s workforce (Curtis et al.,

2003). It provides an overview of the workforce competencies required for an

organization to conduct its business. It is suggested that the behavior of an

organization needs to be changed to support the improved workforce practices. A

unique characteristics of PCMM is its staged framework. Through the increased

organizational maturity, workforce practices can be introduced and improved

steadily and the capability of the organization can be transformed effectively.

The PCMM is designed to achieve four objectives to guide an organization in

improving the workforce competencies: developing individual capability, building

workgroups and culture, motivating and managing performance, and shaping the

workforce. The improvement of the workforce capability can have a positive

influence on the performance of critical business activities and the investments in

process improvement and information technology. The advantage of PCMM is the

staged structure of the framework which can help organizations to prioritize their

improvement activities. Therefore, the improved workforce practices are easier to be

integrated into the existing process improvement activities by using PCMM. The

principles underlying the PCMM are introduced by Curtis et al. (2003) (See table 2).


22

Principle 1: In mature organizations, workforce capability is directly related to

business performance.

Principle 2: Workforce capability is a competitive issue and a source of strategic

advantage.

Principle 3: Workforce capability must be defined in relation to the organization’s

strategic business objective.

Principle 4: Knowledge-intense works shift the focus from job elements to

workforce competencies.

Principle 5: Capability can be measured and improved at multiple levels of the

organization, including individuals, workgroups, workforce competencies, and the

organization.

Principle 6: An organization should invest in improving the capability of those

workforce competencies that are critical to its core competency as a business.

Principle 7: Operational management is responsible for the capability of the

workforce.

Principle 8: The improvement of workforce capability can be pursued as a process

composed from proven practices and procedures.

Principle 9: The organization is responsible for providing improvement

opportunities, and individuals are responsible for taking advantage of them.

Principle 10: Because technologies and organizational forms evolve rapidly,

organizations must continually evolve their workforce practices and develop new

workforce competencies.

Table 2: The principles underlying PCMM (Curtis et al., 2003, P. 6)

2.6.2 Structure of PCMM

The model consists of five maturity levels (also called evolutionary stages), with

each maturity level layering the foundation for the next maturity level (Kulpa, 2007).

Each successive maturity level represents a transformation and an increase in the

level of sophistication in the organization’s workforce practices, processes, and

culture. Each maturity level implies a different level of organizational capability to

manage and develop the workforce. With the exception of the Initial level, there are

22 process areas in the five maturity levels in the PCMM (See figure 2). Each

process area describes the related practices required to reach the goals which


23

enhances the workforce capabilities. These process area threads may allow

organizations to follow an alternate path of improvement.

Maturity

Level

Process Area Threads

Developing

Individual

Capability

Building

workgroups &

culture

Motivating &

managing

performance

Shaping the

workforce

5

Optimizing

Continuous Capability

Improvement

Organizational

Performance

Alignment

Continuous

Workforce

Innovation

4

Predictable

Competency

Based Assets

Competency

Integration

Quantitative

Performance

Management

Organizational

Capability

Management Mentoring Empowered

Workgroups

3 Defined

Competency

Development

Workgroup

Development

Competency

Based

Practices

Workforce

Planning

Competency

Analysis

Participatory

Culture

Career

Development

2 Managed

Training and

Development

Communication

& Coordination

Compensation Staffing

Performance

Management

Work

Environment

Figure 2: Process Thread in the People CMM (Curtis et al., 2009)

Since the PCMM should be implemented using a staged strategy, the goals in all the

process areas in one level have to be accomplished before pursuing the next level. In

P.59 of the latest version of the PCMM introduced by Curtis et al. (2009) (see figure

3), the relationships between the structural components of PCMM is illustrated.

Organizational capability can be assessed by the level of knowledge, skills, and

process abilities of the workforce and the contribution to the organization’s

performance. With the practices implemented in the organization to achieve the


24

process area goals which describe the objectives of the process areas, they are

included in the maturity levels to produce a new organizational capability.

Figure 3: Structure of PCMM (Curtis et al., 2009, P.59)

2.6.2.1 Level 1: Initial

Organizations at the Initial Level are considered to be low-maturity organizations.

They usually have difficulties in recruiting and retaining talented individuals which

result in high employee turnover rate. Furthermore, since the roles and

responsibilities of individuals are rarely clarified, undefined and inconsistent

workforce practices are exercised, and employees are not well-trained to perform the

practices that exist. There is a lack of common vision about the fundamental

management responsibilities. The four characteristics of the organizations at the

initial level are “inconsistency in performing practices, displacement of


25

responsibility, ritualistic practices, and an emotionally detached workforce” (Curtis

et al., 2009, p.15).

2.6.2.2 Level 2: Managed

At Maturity Level 2, the practices implemented focus on guiding managers to

address immediate problems such as staffing, communication and coordination, and

developing skills. The relationships between these process areas of this level are

shown in figure 4. These are the unit-level issues which can be used as the

foundation for managers to implement more sophisticated practices at higher

maturity levels. However, organizations at Maturity Level 2 can hardly perform

effectively due to work overload, environmental distractions, unclear performance

objectives or feedback, lack of relevant knowledge or skill, poor communication,

and low morale (Curtis et al., 2009, p.21). The limitation of the practices is due to

the fact that there is no requirement to identify the common attributes of different

skills across unit that can best determining the methods for individuals for further

development.

Figure 4: Relationships among Maturity Level 2 process areas

(Curtis et al., 2009, P.47)


26

2.6.2.3 Level 3: Defined

In order to gain competitive advantage, it is necessary for organizations to

implement the practices that enable the workforce competencies to be matched with

the business objectives. The workforce practices implemented at the Defined Level

can help the organizations to support the strategic business plans and are adapted to

its business needs. Organizational practices concerning the training and development

are more focused on the enhancement of knowledge, skills and process abilities.

When compared to Maturity Level 2, the teams can self-organize themselves by the

tailoring and application of standard competency-based processes. The infrastructure

of the capability measures is established for the preparation of the capability to be

managed quantitatively in Maturity Level 4 (Curtis et al., 2009, p.25). The

relationships between the process areas of this level are shown in figure 5.




27

2.6.2.4 Level 4: Predictable

Empowering and integrating workforce competencies are the main focus of the

Predicable Level. When compared with the Defined Level, the organizations at the

Predictable Level manage its capability and performance quantitatively which

enable the workforce capabilities to be used more fully. When the workforce

capability is quantified, the capability of performing work of the organizations can

be predicted. Process capability baselines are established by the data generated by

competency-based processes which can be used as inputs for workforce planning.

With better input for strategic decisions for the management, greater level of

authority for daily organizational management activities can be delegated (Curtis et

al., 2009, p.27). The relationships between the process areas of this level are shown

in figure 6.



28

2.6.2.5 Level 5: Optimizing

The focus of the organization at the Optimizing Level is continual improvement.

Change management at this level is considered to be a regular business process. To

ensure that the practices implemented by the individuals align with the business

objectives of the organizations, data concerning the process performance are

collected and evaluated to detect misalignment. Corrective action needs to be taken

if individual performance is not aligned with organizational performance. In the

organization working at the Optimizing Level, employees strive to improve his/ her

own skills and capabilities, and they are eager to use the innovative practices and

technologies to continuously improve the performance of the projects involved, the

team, and the organization (Curtis et al., 2009, p.28). The relationships between the

process areas of this level are shown in figure 7.



29

Chapter 3

Research Methodology

Chapter 3 - Research Methodology

30


The aim of this chapter is to introduce the methods to develop a conceptual model

for agile project management in large-scale organizations. This chapter describes the

details of the field studies that were carried out in one of the largest global

technology companies to empirically examine the research questions stated in the

previous chapter.

3.1 Background of the Company

This company is the largest engineering company in Europe and had about 348,000

employees worldwide at the end of 2015. The focus areas of this company are

electrification, automation, and digitalization. In order to further maintain and

develop the workforce by providing high-quality work environments to attract the

best talents, it is important to create a trustful environment which employees are

given the space for creativity, atmosphere of intensive collaboration and

communication, and state-of the-art IT facilities.

The company has identified five core elements which lead to success.

1. Flexible working hours and places by implementing the concept of mobile

working

2. Encouragement of work-life integration

3. Easy connection the Internet by equipping employees with advanced IT

devices

4. Establishment of open-office landscape which is attractive, functional and

economical

5. Differentiated workplace options are available for employees to choose the

places which enable the efficiency of working


31

It can be seen that human resources, IT, and real estate attribute to the success of the

office concept by increasing the motivation of employees and creating an excellent

working environment.

3.2 Data collection

Preliminary field interviews are conducted to formulate research problems and

questions, identify key constructs, and generate measurement items for the critical

success factors of agile software project management. Data is collected by

conducting face-to-face, semi-structured interviews using open-ended questions. 10

employees with IT responsibility working in a large-scale organization in Germany

with agile practice were invited for the interviews. Since one the focuses of this

dissertation is on the human-related issues of IT projects, two of the interviewees

from the human resources department were included to examine the factors

influencing their decisions of workforce recruitment and the implementation of

workforce development programs. Therefore, the objective of the interview was to

investigate the criteria of employing staff, in particular software project managers

and developers, on different types of IT projects in large company. The content of

the interview included identifying the characteristics of various IT projects, project

methodology, project control, the challenges faced, the strategies to overcome them,

the individual requirements and skills on software managers and developers, etc.

Questions are designed with the aim to understand the views of the

employees on the use of agile methodology to achieve the goals of the

company. All the interviews were voice recorded, transcribed, and analyzed.

The background information of interviewees is listed in Appendix A.

3.3 Data analysis

After transcribing the interviews, the software ATLAS.ti was used to assist and

support the data analysis of the transcripts. Grounded theory approach is used to


32

analyze the data (Glaser, 1978). There are several reasons of choosing grounded

theory. Firstly, this approach is suitable for exploring human behavior and social

interaction (Glaser, 1992). Furthermore, since the application of PCMM in large-

scale organizations is under-explored, this method can help for further investigation

in this area (Birks & Mills, 2011). As this dissertation also focuses on examining the

processes of the workforce practices, grounded theory is appropriate to be applied in

this research (Charmaz, 2006).

3.3.1 Open coding

Open coding was used to analyze the interview transcripts in detail. A code was

assigned which summarizes the key concept of the data. The codes arising from each

transcript were reused in the other interviews and observations. It could be used to

retrieve and categorize similar data chunks for further analysis and drawing

conclusions.

3.3.2 Axial coding

After open coding, it is observed that the interviewees provided a lot of information

about human-related issues, such as the challenges they faced when managing

projects related to the workforce and the strategies they used to overcome these

problems. Therefore, PCMM has been decided to be applied, a maturity framework

which focuses on continuously improving the management and development of the

human assets of an organization, to perform an empirical study on how the model

could help to address critical people issues in an organization (Curtis, 2009).

3.3.3 Selective coding

After establishing the focus of the research, selective coding was conducted which

delimits the coding to only information related to human-related issues and the

process areas in PCMM. The coding focused on retrieving information about the

33

practices already implemented by the organization to achieve the goals of the

process areas, how these practices could help, and how the organization could

improve to fulfil the requirements needed to accomplish the goals of the process

areas. The critical success factors are also identified from the interviews based on

the application of PCMM. Further examination of these factors leading to the

success of agile projects is performed in Phase 2 based on the analysis of practices

used in the organization. Suggestions are provided for the improvement of the

current practices of the company.

34

Chapter 4

Results and Analysis

Chapter 4 - Results and Analysis

35


4.1 Phase 1: Conceptual Framework

The focus of this dissertation is to investigate the people factors influencing the

success of an agile project. Chow & Cao (2008) examined the impact of the five

factor categories on agile project success, namely organizational factors, people

factors, process factors, technical factors, and project factors (see figure 8). It is

found that the people dimension which includes Team Capability and Customer

Involvement is one of the most critical factors that influences the success of the

project. While the attributes of team capability includes team members with high

competence and expertise, team members with great motivation, managers

knowledgeable in agile, manager who have adaptive management style, and

appropriate technical training to team, the attributes of customer involvement

includes good customer relationship, strong customer commitment and presence,

and customer having full authority. The research by Chow & Cao (2008) acts as the

basis of this dissertation study for the research model development.

To summarize the attributes of people factors, the criteria required for the success of

a project can be influenced by capability, personality, motivation and training.

Furthermore, regarding the attributes of Customer Involvement, customer

relationships can be influenced by the above-mentioned factors, e.g. high motivation

to build good relationships with customers, suitable personality of dealing with

customers, sufficient capability to satisfy the needs of customers, and appropriate

trainings offered by the company to improve the skills of the workforce to enhance

customer involvement.


36

Figure 8: Research model proposed by Chow & Cao (2008)

Concerning the motivation of the workforce, Boehm (1981) reported the first ten

motivational factors for software developers which are listed in decreasing order in

importance:

1. Achievement

2. Possibility for growth

3. Work itself

4. Recognition

5. Advancement

6. Technical supervision

7. Responsibility

8. Relations with peers

9. Relations with subordinates

10. Salary


37

There are several prominent motivation theories that are worth mentioning which

can help to explain the motivation of software developers, such as Maslow’s

hierarchy of human needs (Maslow, 1954), Herzberg’s theory on motivators and

hygiene factors (Herzberg, 1986), and McClelland’s achievement motivation theory

(McClelland, 1967). Factors influencing the motivation can be categorized into two

groups: intrinsic factors and extrinsic factors. The two factors are defined by

Asproni (2004): The intrinsic factors are the ones that come from the work itself and

the goals and aspirations of the individual, e.g. achievement, possibility for growth,

social relationship, etc. In contrast, extrinsic factors are the ones that depend on the

surrounding environment, or the basic human needs, e.g. salary, office space,

responsibility. In general, intrinsic factors tend to have stronger influence in

motivating people in the workplace when compared to extrinsic factors (Thomas,

2000).

There were different opinions on the benefits of applying agile methodology in their

projects. Not only did the quality of the software increase, the atmosphere and

motivation in the team also improved dramatically. It also facilitated knowledge

sharing between project stakeholders.

“Since we began with daily meetings we have only missed one. Sometimes my

laziness hinders me to call for the daily meeting, but my teammates remind me.” –

P2

“The agile approach saves time and money and is simply more efficient overall. It

also makes the work a lot more fun and people can more easily take the

responsibility for a particular matter.” – P6

However, the interviewees also raised some concerns of the agile approach,

especially in the aspects of people-related factors such as personality and new team

members recruitment.


38

“The daily meeting as any rituals has its own delicate pattern: introverts or new

comers tend to hide or to say as little as possible, extroverts tend to be wordy.

Sometimes this pattern must be changed.” – P5

“The recruitment of new team members has been done by members who did not

integrate completely all the aspects of the new methods.” – P1

“The new team members showed low interest and even resistance with the pair

programming practice which was running well with the rest of the team.” – P4

Willingness to communicate is a very important issue and is considered to be one of

the personality criteria when involving in agile project.

“When all the team members are sitting together, communication is a lot easier,

particularly when the teams also consists of members from different functions. You

don´t constantly have to seek out the relevant experts, send them emails, call or

make special arrangements to meet them, because everyone is in the same place.” –

P8

The ultimate goal of a project is to satisfy the project objectives and achieve project

success. However, project success is difficult to be defined as there are different

measurement criteria and approaches. The lack of documentation is one of the

biggest concerns of the agile methodology (Selic, 2009). Agile measurement is

therefore important to assess the performance of agile approach to determine

whether the benefits of agile development overweight the costs. The measurements

practices do not only help to monitor and reduce risk of projects, but also provide

valuable information for the enterprise to evaluate their measures. It is found that

clear and explicit goals are necessary to be set to help the organizations to steer

towards the objectives if agile methodology is used in large-scale organization

(Brown et al., 2013). Eleven criteria are suggested by Hartmann & Dymond (2006)

when designing the agile process measurements (See table 3).


39

There are three main outcome factors that are commonly used as the metrics to

measure software project performance: cost, time, and quality (Abdel-Hamid et al.,

1999; Chow & Cao, 2008; Deephouse et al., 1995; Lee & Xia, 2010; Lindvall et al.,

2004). It means that the success of a project is indicated by the fact that the projects

should be completed on time, on budget, and achieved the required quality. All the

three factors have to be satisfied in order to be qualified as project success. For

example, if a high-quality product is delivered with time delay or budget overrun,

this project cannot be considered to be a success (Shao et al., 2014). Besides final

cost, completion time, software product quality can also be evaluated by the

remaining undetected defects at the end of the programming phase (Abdel-Hamid et

al., 1999). Research found that the focus of quality in a project can yield better

outcomes in software development (Shao et al., 2014). Deephouse et al. (1995)

evaluated the software quality by usability and capability. They also argued that

productivity is an important metric which should be used to measure the quality

since increasing the productivity reduces cost and improves the competitiveness of

developers (Deephouse et al., 1995). The paper by Lee & Xia (2010) used software

functionality as the measurement of software quality. This includes the achievement

of functional goals, satisfaction of user and technical requirements. However,

timeliness is seen as the top priority by Shao et al. (2014). A case study related to

agile software development is presented by Concas et al. (2012) which focuses on

the quality metrics such as lines of code (LOC), number of methods and classes.

Scope is also considered to be a critical attribute to measure agile performance

besides the three above-mentioned measurement attributes (cost, time, and quality)

(Chow & Cao, 2008; Lindvall et al., 2004). It can help the project managers to better

evaluate the achievement of requirements and objectives. Performance metrics can

also be categorized into two different measures: business measures and technical

measures (Brown et al., 2013). While business measures enables stakeholders to

ensure project objectives are met, technical measures use key performance indicators

(KPIs) to quantified different perspectives of status and progress.


40

A Good Agile Metric or Diagnostic

1. Affirms and reinforces Lean and Agile principles

2. Measures outcome, not output

3. Follows trends, not numbers

4. Answers a particular question for a real person

5. Belongs to a small set of metrics and diagnostics

6. Is easy to collect

7. Reveals, rather than conceals, its context and significant variables

8. Provides fuel for meaningful conversation

9. Provides feedback on a frequent and regular basis

10. May measure Value (Product) or Process

11. Encourages “good-enough” quality

Table 3: Criteria of a good metric or diagnostic (Hartmann & Dymond, 2006)

Efficiency and effectiveness are also used in several studies as the performance

measure attributes (Henderson & Lee, 1992; Liu et al., 2011; Shao et al., 2014). A

performance questionnaire is designed by Henderson & Lee (1992) to assess the

efficiency, effectiveness, and elapsed time of the developer teams when performing

a project. Similar categorization approach is also used by Liu et al. (2011) which is

based on the findings of Henderson & Lee (1992). Project performance can also be

evaluated by process performance and product performance, which indicate the

software development process and system performance respectively in IT projects

(Nidumolu et al., 1995). There are three dimensions included in process

performance, learning acquired during the project, process control, and quality of

interactions. For product performance, it is assessed by the operational efficiency of

software, responsiveness of software, and flexibility of software. The impact of

project uncertainty on software development project performance can be studied by

using these attributes. Measurement scale specific to different phases in the agile

practices is designed by So & Scholl (2009). Various performance targets are set in

iteration planning, iterative development, customer acceptance tests and

retrospectives. Hartmann & Dymond (2006) defined the attribute “business value

delivered” as the goal to be achieved in an agile project. They include the amount of

capital required, net present value, internal rate of return, and return on investment.


41

In their papers, a metric evaluation checklist is also provided which helps agile users

to clarify the intention, use and potential for abuse of the metrics. Table 4 provides a

summary of the success attributes in software projects.

Reference Composite Success

Attributes

Success Attributes

Abdel-Hamid

& Swett, 1999

Cost Final cost (in person-days)

Time Completion time (in days)

Quality Remaining undetected defects (in

numbers of defects)

Brown et al.,

2013

Cycle-time

reduction

Business-related:

- Time from initiation to delivery

of first increment

- Time from initiation to project

closure

Team-related:

- Build/release cycle time

- Sprint velocity

- Blocking work items

- Change costs over time

Quality Business-related:

- Production defects per 100

function points

Team-related:

- Defect trends

- Change trends

- Integration trends

Continuous

Optimization

Business-related:

- Process maturity level

Team-related:

- Practice adoption

- Variance in cost to complete

Productivity Business-related:

- Function points per man-year

Team-related:

- Sprint burndown chart - Release burndown chart


42

Chow & Cao,

2008

Timeliness Deliver on time

Cost Within estimated cost and effort

Quality Deliver a good working product

Scope Meet all requirements by the

customer

Deephouse et

al., 1995

Quality - Capability

- Usability

Meeting Targets - On time

- On budget

Henderson &

Lee, 1992

Efficiency - Budgets

- Schedules

- Efficiency of team operations

- Amount of work produced

Effectiveness - Quality

- Interaction with people outside

the team

- Meet project objectives

Elapsed Time - Done its work faster with the

same level of quality

- Meet goals as quickly as

possible

Hartmann &

Dymond, 2006

Business Value

Delivered

- Amount of Capital required

- Net Present Value (NPV)

- Internal Rate of Return (IRR)

- Return on Investment (ROI)

Liu et al., 2011 Efficiency - Time

- Cost

- Number of participants

Effectiveness - Quality of the work produced

- Meet project objectives

Lee & Xia,

2010

On-time

Completion

-

On-budget

Completion

-

Software

Functionality

- achieve functional goals

- meet user requirements

- satisfy user needs

- meet technical requirement


43

Nidumolu,

1995

Process

Performance - Learning (more learning

opportunities are created)

- Process Control

- User-IS interactions

Product

Performance

- Operational efficiency

- Responsiveness

- Flexibility

Staples &

Webster, 2008

Team

effectiveness

- Productivity

- The number of innovations or

new ideas introduced by the

team

- Reputation for work excellence

- Attainment of team production

or service goals

- Quality and accuracy of work

- Efficiency of team operations

- Morale of team personnel

- Adherence to schedule and

budget

- Intention to remain

Table 4: Summary of the success attributes in software projects

As stated in the previous sections, People CMM which consists of five maturity

levels is a framework which provides guidance to the organizations to improve their

processes for managing and developing human workforces. The aim of this

framework is to help the organizations to characterize the maturity of the workforce

practices, such as establishing a culture of excellence, applying process

improvement into the workforce development, priorities setting for improvement

actions and establishing actions for continuous workforce development. The

application of PCMM for people-related practices can help employees to increase

their motivation of work and offer training to enhance their capabilities. Therefore,

these two factors are included as the moderator of capability and personality of the

workforce which can lead to agile project success.


44

Interviewees were also asked about the elements which contribute to the success of

the project. Skills, personality, and motivation are frequently mentioned.

“There was a sense of urgency felt by the whole team. The managers were really

supportive and managed to build a small coalition of two very motivated individuals

to start the change.” – P1

“Autonomy, mastery, and personal goal are main drivers of motivation that are

reinforced every day in the daily meeting. The team gains knowledge and

involvement.” – P7

On page 219 of the PCMM document by Curtis et al. (2009), examples of the

workforce competencies are listed which include:

1. Knowledge required to perform required tasks

2. Skills required to perform required tasks

3. Ability to perform skills within the processes or workflows defined by the

organization for performing the work

4. Types or levels of knowledge, skills, and process abilities that would

characterize different levels of capability in a workforce competency

5. Behavioral characteristics of how skills and processes are performed

6. Behavioral manifestations of an orientation toward the work, colleagues, or

customers

7. Personality characteristics that are conductive to successful performance

While point 1 to point 4 can be characterized as the capability of the workforce,

point 5 to point 7 are categorized as personality. Although motivation and training

are also considered as the attributes of people factors which contribute to the agile

process success, they are categorized differently since they are heavily influenced by

the external factors (shown in figure 9), e.g. job nature, training and development.

Hence, the following hypotheses is posited:


45

With the application of people-related practices of PCMM on the existing

workforce, the success rate of agile projects can be increased.

As mentioned above, since motivation and training are interrelated with the people-

related practices implemented by the organizations, these two attributes are

surrounded by dash lines in the proposed research model. Capability and personality

are directly related to the employee himself/ herself. Together with the people-

related practices, the agile performance can be improved and hence, increase the

success rate of the projects.

Figure 9: Proposed Conceptual Model


46

4.2 Phase 2: Case Study Interview

In this section, the practices implemented by the organization that satisfy the goals

of the process areas from Level 2 to Level 5 of the People Capability Maturity

Model are presented. There are no process areas at Maturity Level 1 (Initial Maturity

Level) since this level is characterized by chaos and inconsistency (Curtis et al.,

2005). Furthermore, the major causes of failure to accomplish certain process areas

and achieve a particular maturity level are also discussed. Selected quotations are

drawn from the interviews to clarify the analysis.

There is a project management guideline to implement project at this company. The

case study results suggest that it is not necessary to apply the project management

guideline set by the company in every project, especially when the project size is

rather small. The use of the guideline could provide help with the project

implementation regarding time and budget. On the other hand, higher degree of

freedom could help to improve the quality. To prioritize the projects, there are

several factors that have to be considered, including budget, duration, political

perspective, and the right people. Summaries of the results are listed in Appendix B

and Appendix C.

4.2.1 Level 2: Managed

It would be difficult for managers to implement organization-wide practices if basic

workforce practices are not introduced. Therefore, the practices implemented at

Maturity Level 2 are the most fundamental and could establish the foundation to

manage performance at a higher level.

4.2.1.1 Staffing

Qualified individuals are recruited for open positions. The organization conducts

interviews to select the right people for the right position with defined criteria:


47

“A project manager must have the ability to communicate with people at different

levels. They need to acknowledge you. They also need to see whether you have

reached a certain status, whether you can speak the language. You have to be like a

seller, this is also important in this level.” – P2

They selected candidates not only based on their knowledge and skill, but also

whether they can provide values to the task they work on:

“If you make something like a value, the value of a good project work, it's getting

more value than just running the IT” – P7

4.2.1.2 Communication and Coordination

Sharepoint is used in the company to provide intranet portals for collaborating and

sharing enterprise information. It could help the organization to manage its data and

information more easily, and to increase employee engagement:

“Implementing the Sharepoint platform as the collaboration platform for all

employees” – P8

4.2.1.3 Work Environment

A mobile application has been developed in the organization to support users with

location information such as phone numbers and addresses of the

companies/facilities in different areas, and information regarding the menus in the

staff restaurants. Adequate physical resources – various brands of mobile phones,

are provided to perform the assigned work:

“I have received a version for testing. We have different Android devices, Samsung,

HTC, and different iPhones and iOS versions. The mobile application has been


48

tested using them.” “New version has been implemented every two weeks. It has

been better and better, and new ideas have been incorporated into the App.” – P2

4.2.1.4 Performance Management

There is regular communication with employees about the performance of their

committed works. The senior would try to understand the conditions and potential

actions for improvement are also discussed:

“Every year I have to address these underperformers to tell them, you are

underperformer, to try to understand why it is that, and try to challenge them, to

make goals that are measurable and realistic and so on, and to push them a little bit

and to challenge them.“—P8

4.2.1.5 Training and Development

Employees could address their needs for training in critical skills. They could first

discuss their training needs with their superiors. After the requests are approved by

human resource department, the training and development opportunities would be

provided to the employees:

“The training has to be reasonable, therefore, it is important for the employees to

discuss with their superiors, what kind of training is meaningful, what should the

employees do, what kind of skills they want to learn.” – P9

4.2.1.6 Compensation

Guidelines on the organizational compensation strategy are developed. A clearly

defined pay structure provides a framework for the implementation of compensation

policies in accordance with the job level:


49

“There is policy on the employee payment and it is implemented by the executive

board. The payment is composed of both fixed and variable parts. The higher the job

level, the more variable payment there would be.” – P9

4.2.2 Level 3: Defined

To achieve Maturity Level 3, the organization has to gain competitive advantage by

developing the capability to manage its workforce as a strategic asset to accomplish

its business activities. Therefore, the improved workforce practices implemented at

this level become critical enablers of business strategy (Curtis et al., 2009).

4.2.2.1 Competency Analysis

The organization identifies the workforce competencies required to perform the

business activities:

“He has to be good in his specialized area, he must have a good grasp, he must

understand immediately what the project manager or the customer want.” – P3

4.2.2.2 Workforce Planning

The performance of the workforce activities is planned and tracked on a regular

basis. The project manager not only ensures that the right people with the right skills,

experience, and competencies are assigned the right positions, but also ensures the

team members know their responsibilities and satisfy with the job:

“Our project manager spends a lot of time only to deal with communication and to

get the project on track from the beginning of the project, because everyone needs to

be positioned, everyone must firstly find out the role, and has to see who he will be

working with, with who he can work with, whether there is any conflict.”– P2

4.2.2.3 Competency Development


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Employees could identify their career objectives/targets and pursue competency

development opportunities to support them to achieve their goals:

“It is important for us to know what his career goal is, what does he need, and then

we could identify whether the training is suitable for him.” – P9

4.2.2.4 Career Development

The organization provides development opportunities for employees to enhance

career capabilities. Discussion and evaluation of career promotion is held once per

year with the department head and human resource department. Employees

considered to be “Top Talent” are also identified who would be given opportunities

to participate in specialized training:

“We have a matrix for the classification of employee competencies which shows the

potential and performance of the employees. Is he a solid performer, high performer,

or exceptional talent? Then we will see what the steps will be planned.” – P9

4.2.2.5 Competency-Based Practices

Orientation activities are designed for team members to familiarize with each other

and the competencies required to perform their work assignments:

“Usually when a team comes together, it doesn't work with each other. You have to

give some time for people to see, to grow as a team, and to see what each other's

strengths are. So we have this also in this project too, like what we call a storming

phase.” – P5

4.2.2.6 Workgroup Development

The organization offers offsite workshop to provide the team members opportunities

to develop workgroup skills which could increase the group cohesiveness:


51

“For me, the psychology is not the most important in a project, but sociology, since

the group dynamics has a very strong influence on the atmosphere of the project.”–

P1

4.2.2.7 Participatory Culture

The team members are encouraged to participate in the decision-making process:

“My experience is, engaging the people, you have to let them actively support you.

You listen to their suggestions. Even if there is something that's totally against what

you think what it is, just give them a little bit benefits of the doubt, and tell them that

they can help creating something really good here and being a part of it, and giving

them the sense of, that there were something and I think this is something that

ultimately helps to drive this forward.” – P5

4.2.3 Level 4: Predictable

At Maturity Level 3, the processes are qualitatively predicable. But at Maturity

Level 4, the processes should be quantitatively predicable and can quantify the

capability of its workforce performing their committed works. The organization

should also be able to integrate different competency-based processes into a single

multidisciplinary process (Curtis et al., 2009).

4.2.3.1 Competency Integration

Different workforce competencies are analyzed to identify the opportunities to

integrate the processes to support multi-disciplinary work:

“I think as a project leader in general and also in a project, a good leader really

identifies what the strengths and weaknesses are, and really put the people then at

work for the specific activities.” – P5


52

4.2.3.2 Empowered Workgroups

Employees are given a certain degree of freedom with optimal control in managing

their tasks and performance:

“We have a lot of degree of freedom and we can decide for ourselves what is

important right now, is it this topic, or this topic? We are free to decide” – P6

“There is always this kind of person with this entrepreneurship. You have to treat

them the best way, but have to take care of them because they change the things.” –

P8

4.2.3.3 Competency-Based Assets

The guideline of the standard project management methodology specially designed

for the company developed within the competency community is used by the

employees to support the company’s business activities:

“We have this project management methodology. And there is also training,

consistent methodology, milestones, templates in which one can be guided.”– P2

4.2.3.4 Quantitative Performance Management

Quantitative measurable performance objectives are established. It is important to

manage the employee’s performance and align the objectives to facilitate effective

delivery of work:

“You have to stay on time, and budget, and quality. So you have to find a way to

manage the expectation that you still reach the three goals” – P5

“My main part of the job is to make sure that they have the right assignment and to

deliver actually on time and budget.” – P7


53

4.2.3.5 Organizational Capability Management

To effectively integrate the capacity to achieve strategic and operational objectives

of the company, the capability of employees’ competencies should be managed.

Therefore, employee performance is addressed and new tasks are assigned regularly

for contributing to capability growth:

“There are 70% of average employees, 20% of high performers, and 10%

underperformers. You have to always challenge the high performers because they

get bored of doing the same thing all the time. In comparison to the 70%, they feel

very comfortable in doing the same thing. But in general, if someone is just lazy, you

have to tell him that.” – P8

4.2.3.6 Mentoring

Mentoring program is organized in the company. It plays a significant role in the

talent management process. The mentee has to set clearly defined goals in regard to

his/her personal development, and the mentor provides guidance and shares

knowledge and experience with the mentee. It provides two-way beneficial learning

situations as both parties could develop different kinds of skills, strengthen

relationships between individuals, and foster networking:

“This relationship should last at least one year to facilitate an effective exchange of

knowledge and experience. In order to build a profound relationship, duration of 2-

3 years is possible.” – P10

4.2.4 Level 5: Optimization

The focus of the Optimization Level is to continuously improve the workforce

capability and practices. Change management at this level is considered to be an


54

ordinary business process. However, the performance at all levels should remain

aligned with organization objectives (Curtis et al., 2009).

After thorough analysis, it is found that the organization is yet to achieve Maturity

Level 5. There were still challenges faced by the organization that were yet to be

solved, especially in the process areas Continuous Capability Improvement and

Organizational Performance Alignment. Examples are provided to illustrate the

challenges the company faced.

4.2.4.1 Continuous Capability Improvement

Due to certain constraints such as resource capability and firm policies, there are

difficulties in implementing improvement technique which hinder the capability and

performance of work processes.

After the project started, it is realized that there was a limitation on the system which

made it impossible to finish the project on time:

“They have limitations in their system, then it will have an influence of the end of

the project, the go-live date” – P6

Since a part of the IT services of the organization has been acquired by an external

IT service corporation, the two companies work closely with each other, and

therefore, it is considered to be the “preferred supplier” of the organization.

However, they had problems in getting the right people with qualified competencies,

organizing themselves and communicating with each other. This has led to severe

cost overrun and project delay:

“This company is something like our prefer supplier within us. It is our first supplier

we should ask, and also the last…it was about communication. They really have

severe problem delivering it. They really have problems getting the right people to it.


55

They did not have enough knowledge. They have no good methodology, and they

didn't say it to us” – P7

4.2.4.2 Organizational Performance Alignment

During the interviews, questions about project control and success were raised.

However, different interviewees have different answers on these questions. It

implies that their standards and expectations on these aspects are different.

Deviation from project objectives would lead to a loss of direction to improve the

capability of work processes, and hence, performance could not be aligned among

individuals, workgroups, and organizations.

The following show the opinions on project control and success by the interviewees:

“To get the results and quality, and the goals to do in time and budget.” – P5

“Our team in the IT department is quality. Because budget has in the past not been

an issue, and we do not so much stick to the timetable” – P6

“Quality, budget and time, the triangle. In my personal opinion, you should also

focus on maximum on two of them, not on three. You won't make it.” – P7

4.2.4.3 Continuous Workforce Innovation

Innovation is one of the core values of the company and it would be highly

appreciated:

“Core value of our company from the very beginning would be innovative...She told

me actually that she likes to innovate, to do absolutely new things. I asked her to

give some examples from her life, and she explained me that, and then I recognized

and realized Wow, she is really innovative and she really likes that and wants that


56

and wants to work for the company who wants to be seen as a pioneer, and that's a

great thing.” – P8

4.2.5 Summary of the Case Study

As demonstrated in the above section, the process areas in PCMM could help the

organization to identify the objectives of the implemented practices, realize the

importance of these practices, and assist the organization in finding the problems

currently existed. The PCMM framework provides a roadmap for organizations to

transform their cultures and provide lasting improvements using a staged strategy.

The staged framework helps the organization to prioritize the practices implemented

to improve the capability of workforce.

When applying this staged structure framework, the goals of all the process areas in

one particular level should be achieved before proceeding to the next level. Since the

process areas in a level are mutually supporting each other, if one process area is

ignored, there may be a risk of failing to support other higher-maturity process areas

due to the removal of critical foundational practices. Maturity levels should not be

skipped also since the lower maturity practices are the foundation to effectively

implement higher maturity practices.

It is important for organizations to pursue higher levels of maturity since it supports

the motivation and performance to continuously improve the development and

management of workforce. Everyone is expected to contribute with an improvement

in his or her own capability, and the performance of the team and organization. One

of the focuses of Maturity Level 5 is to ensure the alignment of performance with

organizational objectives. Therefore, the company that is being investigated in this

paper needs to focus on continual improvement and to take corrective action on

realignment to reach Maturity Level 5.


57

To overcome the constraints in the process area Continuous Capability Improvement,

the company could make use of the results from the quantitative management

activities in Maturity Level 4. For example, it can strengthen the practices

implemented in the process area Empowered Workgroup by empowering employees

to continuously improve their capability for performing the task, such as identifying

opportunities for them to improve performance by allowing them to choose the

external service provider which is currently restricted by the firm policies. For the

objective misalignment problem in the process area Organizational Performance

Alignment mentioned above, not only could the company refer to the results of the

process area Quantitative Performance Management, but it could also apply the past

experience in similar situation, or encourage suggestions from the workforce.

Evidence shows that achieving higher maturity level could improve performance in

quality, cost, and timeliness. However, there are also criticisms of attaining higher

maturity level. One of the most common criticisms is that there would be too much

documentations and burdens which may pose restrictions on the autonomy of

employees. The largely formalized and standardized processes would reduce their

motivations and kill innovations which will lead to negative consequences on long-

term development and management of the organization (Adler et al., 2005).

Therefore, organizations need to carefully plan and analyze the practices that are

going to be implemented in order to achieve a higher maturity level.

58

Chapter 5

Discussion


59


5.1 Limitation and Future Work

Although a rigorous approach is employed to the development of people factor

categorization and the empirical investigation of the application of PCMM in a

large-scale organization, there are several limitation that need to be recognized.

Furthermore, a number of future directions of research are discussed in the

following.

Firstly, the participants selected to take part in this research are limited to people

working in the IT department and human resource department in a company. While

this selection was effective in helping us to access to sources of data, results and

conclusions cannot be generalized. Even the interviewees are from the same

department or company, due to different experience, project sizes, and project

backgrounds, they may also have different opinions on the same issues. Therefore,

further empirical studies are necessary to generalize the findings. The research will

be continued by interviewing people working in the other IT companies with agile

practices. A wider collection of data would be useful to compare the practices

implemented in different organizations to allow a better understanding of how

PCMM could be applied to improve the capability and performance of workforce.

More concrete solutions could also be provided by using the experience from other

companies.

The second limitation is related to the categorization of people attributes. The

attributes of the people factors influencing the agile project success are categorized

into Capability, Personality, Motivation, and Training. While Capability and

Personality are largely dependent on the employee himself/herself which are less

likely to be changed within a short period of time, Motivation and Training are more

dependent on the external factors such as the job nature and activities offered by the


60

organization. However, this categorization approach might not have fully captured

other forms of people factors. A more comprehensive way in distinguishing the

characteristics of people factors is desirable to fully capture the features of the

people factors.

Thirdly, based on the existing literature and intuitive reasoning, a conceptual model

is hypothesized. As project success can be measured by many different attributes,

this dissertation provides a summary of the use and/or findings of the project

performance metrics. Since they are very diverse, no concrete attribute is assigned to

the Agile Project Success construct. There are many possible metrics that could be

used for performance measurement which should also be considered in the

conceptual model. As this study highlights several people factors (capability,

personality, motivation, training) affecting project success when agile methodology

is introduced in software projects together with the practices suggested in PCMM,

future work should identify the concrete attributes as the performance metrics to

investigate the influence of specific people factors on specific attributes by using

specific practices in PCMM. This can help the stakeholders to better control the

project results by managing the characteristics of workforce when recruiting and/or

training agile project team members.

Fourthly, as this study highlights the people factors influencing the success of agile

software projects, future work should accordingly focus on identifying and

addressing other factors that can also improve the project success rate through the

application of PCMM, such as organizational factors that when employees are given

a certain degree of freedom through optimal controlling, it would be more efficient

for them to exercise the benefits of the agile approach as self-organizing teams. The

Agile Manifesto announces “The best architectures, requirements, and designs

emerge from self-organizing teams”. Through empowered workgroups as suggested

from PCMM, it enables a cooperative organizational culture instead of hierarchal.

This can therefore facilitates a proper agile-style work environment which leads to


61

project success. In terms of technical factors suggested by Chow & Cao (2009),

appropriate technology/ tools and complete set of correct agile practices are

necessary to ensure the coding standards are well-defined, integration testing and

software delivery are correct, etc. By referring to quantitative performance

management, process measures can be established and used to capture quantitative

information which can provide insights for project managers to evaluate the agile

project performance, such as discovering the factors affecting the processes or

results, finding means to reduce variations in process or result, analyzing the

relationships between parameters, searching for opportunities for innovation in

product and process.

Fifthly, this study used a qualitative approach by interviewing the employees

applying agile methodology in their projects. The data collected by this approach

can provide the details about human behavior, attitudes, personality characteristics,

and project information that cannot be explained by using quantitative approach. In

this research, it enables flexibility to identify the people factors which affect the

agile project success, and the PCMM practices implemented in the organization can

be specified. However, quantitative approach can help to finalize the results and

narrow down the possible directions for follow up research. Therefore, it is believed

that an integrated research approach that combines qualitative and quantitative data

analyses can be helpful in generalizing the qualitative data and position research in a

transformative framework. After using the qualitative approach to gain an

understanding of the underlying motivations and background of the stories which

provide insights into problem setting and idea generations, quantitative approach can

be used to explore the findings and measure the incidence of the views and opinions

provided through qualitative approach.

Lastly, the initial target of the study was to obtain more data by interviewing more

agile project stakeholders. However, the response rate was lower than originally

planned. There are several reasons which can explain the low response rate. Firstly,


62

the eligibility criteria for interviewees to participate in the interview was to have

experience in agile software project. Although the benefits of applying agile

approach is well-known and many project managers have been considering of using

agile in their projects, due to the obstacles in various respects such as the

misunderstanding of agile concepts by project stakeholders, misalignment of

opinions towards agile application, lack of training, insufficient experience and

support, company culture, the implementation of “real” agile was still impracticable

at that stage. Furthermore, for those employees who have already been involved in

projects using agile approach, as software development release cycles are much

shorter than those using the traditional waterfall approach, they have comparatively

tight daily schedules. The team members using scrum are required to attend and

participate in daily scrum meetings to discuss what they have accomplished

yesterday, what they will do today, and whether they are any obstacles impeding the

project progresses. Due to the time constraints, not all agile project stakeholders

could participate in the interview. Further research will continue to invite more

interviewees for the collection of data. It is also feasible for the employees who are

considering of applying agile approach in their projects to participate in the

interviews to understand the reasons that stop them from implementing this

methodology and how they think about the processes and results of applying agile in

projects.

5.2 Implications for Research and Practice

Human issues have been identified as one of the most important component in agile

software development, including amicability, talent, skill, and communication

(Cockburn & Highsmith, 2011). Individual competency is being focused as the

critical factor in project success. If the people are good enough, almost any process

can be used to accomplish their assignment. On the contrary, no process can repair

the inadequacy if the people do not have the specific competency required. In this

dissertation, the attributes of the people factors are categorized as capability,


63

personality, motivation, and training. As capability and personality can be used to

distinguish a person’s characteristics before starting the work at the organization

and/or in the software project, they are considered to be the elements which cannot

be easily changed in a shorter time period when compared to motivation and

training. Motivation and training can more easily be changed by external factors,

such as organizational culture and project nature. In existing literature, the people-

related attributes which are differentiated in this approach cannot be found. Research

on the management of the workforce in agile software projects is limited. By using

this categorization method, characteristics of workforce can be more easily

distinguished and classified without bias, enabling researchers to conduct further

research by using it as predictors across various life domains, such as performance

outcome, satisfaction level, and socioeconomic status.

By differentiating the people factors into these four categories, project managers and

human resources department can use them as indicators and guidelines to make

decisions on the hiring/ firing and management processes of the workforce. Finding

the right people with suitable personalities and capabilities is the first step. Once

they are part of the team, support can be provided to enable them to grow by

offering sufficient financial compensation, suitable training opportunities,

company’s culture/ atmosphere which fits one’s personality, a job which matches

one’s personal goal and capabilities, and strong values base and real passion for the

work. In agile software team which is featured by customer collaboration and

frequent communication with various project stakeholders, the benefits of building

personal connection and being authentic should not be forgotten, and therefore,

personality is as important as the capability when adopting the agile methodology in

a software project.

The People Capability Maturity Model (PCMM) is a maturity framework which

provides the guidelines for organizations to improve their ability in attracting,

developing, motivating, organizing, and retaining talent. This dissertation aims at


64

investigating how PCMM can be used in large-scale organizations with agile

approach to increase the success rate in agile software project. In existing research,

there are large amount of empirical studies of organizations using Capability

Maturity Model (CMM) which have produced significant advances in the

understanding of the model for appraising software process maturity and for helping

software organizations progress along an evolutionary path to mature disciplined

software processes (Herbsleb et al., 1997). The importance of people factors in agile

projects has been emphasized, however, the challenges and solutions concerning this

issue remain largely a black box. There have been no published studies I am aware

of on the application of PCMM in agile projects in large-scale organizations. This

study fills the research gap of the PCMM empirical studies in agile projects by

providing evidence for the importance of people factors when using agile

methodology in software projects. A research model is proposed which shows how

PCMM can be applied to manage the people factors to achieve agile project success.

Real-life practices are demonstrated by collecting data from the interview

participants which can provide insights and recommendations for the agile project

stakeholders about the approaches they can apply in their own projects. Many

organizations realize that they need to improve their IT-related processes and

workforce in order to enhance the project performance. However, it is difficult for

them to clearly indicate the issues they need to focus and the way to solve the

problems. Moreover, there are nowadays still no global standard to benchmark the

human resources processes in an organization. Therefore, the measurement of HR

policies and alignment of employee development with the business process are

challenging. This empirical study acts as a valuable reference for project managers

to understand which maturity level they are capable to reach, make decision on their

targets in improving workforce capability, how they can apply the model to solve

the challenges they face, and what kind of practices they can implement to achieve

project success.

65

Chapter 6

Conclusion


66


People are a vital element to an organization’s long-term success. In order to

effectively manage the workforce in the software development industry, PCMM

could be used not only to attract, engage, and retain workforce, but also to provide

guidance on how to continuously improve the workforce’s capabilities. It aims at

building strong linkages of people processes with business results. The qualitative

approach of the study provided by the respondents gives an insight into the real-life

experience of agile practices in large organizations. 10 employees working in a

large-scale organization in Germany with agile practices are involved in the study.

People factors were focused in the interview, such as the staffing requirements in

terms of skills and personalities, opportunities provided to the employees for the

enhancement of capabilities, the current challenges faced in the agile projects, the

solutions to tackle the problems, and the measurement of project success. Based on

previous research, a research model is proposed which the people factors are

categorized into four attributes, namely capability, personality, motivation, and

training. Capability and personality are considered to be the factors which cannot be

easily changed when compared to motivation and training which are dependent on

external factors such as practices implemented in the organizations, the job nature,

work environment and colleagues. PCMM acts as the moderator in this research

model for the investigation of its influence of people factors on project success.

The data collected from the interviews reveal that the organization has achieved

Maturity Level 4 in PCMM, which means it has the capability to predict its

performance and capacity for work by creating a culture of measurement and

exploits shared experience (Curtis et al., 2003). However, due to the strategic

constraints and misalignment of standards on project control amongst the

workgroups, there is still a need for the organization to improve the current practices

in order to reach Maturity Level 5. Therefore, it is necessary for the organizations

which would like to achieve a higher maturity level to understand clearly the


67

effectiveness of the current practices and review the feasibility of the

implementation of the practices in the next level after accomplishing the goals in the

current level. This paper contributes to research and practice by examining

empirically the way to apply PCMM, showing examples of real-life practices to

achieve the goals of various process areas, and how the model could help the

organization to understand the challenges it faced and provide suggestions for

potential improvement.

Reference

68

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Curriculum Vitae

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Curriculum Vitae

Personal Information

Name: LEE, Alice Jing

Date of Birth: 26th February, 1988

Educational Background

05/2015 – 05/2017 PhD in Management at the University of St. Gallen

10/2012 – 12/2014 Master of Science (M.Sc.) in Computer Science with specialization in

Software Engineering at the Technical University of Munich

09/2007 – 05/2012 Bachelor of Engineering (B.Eng.) in Computer Science at the University

of Hong Kong

09/2007 – 05/2011 Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) in Information Systems with Economics as minor subject at the University of Hong Kong

10/2009 – 03/2010 Exchange semester in Management and Technology at the Technical

University of Munich

Working Experience

05/2015 – 01/2017 University of St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland, Research Assistant at

the Institute for Customer Insights

03/2013 – 03/2015 Siemens AG, Munich, Germany, Working student in Siemens Real

Estate (Information Technology)

10/2012 – 12/2012 Allianz SE, Munich, Germany, Working student in Group Operations,

Business Architecture

10/2008 – 08/2012 University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Research assistant in the faculty

of Business Information Systems

06/2011 – 08/2011 SAP Deutschland AG & Co.KG, Walldorf, Germany, Internship in

System Landscape Optimization (SLO)

06/2010 – 07/2010 Allianz SE, Munich, Germany, Internship in Group Operations,

Organizational Architecture

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