Challenges with Agile in a System Development Department : A Case Study

Abstract

Even though agile approaches are renowned for rapid and efficient adaptionto market changes, decreased time for solving client demands, and morevalue for the customer, they may also introduce unfortunate challenges thatcan hinder the productivity of organizations. It is challenging to implementand use agile approaches in organizations successfully, and while well-knownchallenges are well understood, new ones are emerging. This master thesisaims to uncover the potential challenges with agile in a system developmentdepartment through a qualitative, descriptive case study, where interviewsof key personnel and observations were conducted. Nine challenges withassociated causes and consequences were uncovered, most of them alreadyprevalent in existing theory. The case study did, however, uncover a chal-lenge related to the estimation of maintenance work in upcoming Sprints.This challenge is not covered in the Scrum framework and is therefore sug-gested as a subject for future research.iii