Software development governance challenges of a middle-sized company in agile transition

We studied how a middle-sized Finnish company employing agile methods governs its software product development. Through observations and interviews we followed the trace from strategic plans in the form of roadmaps to various backlogs and all the way to daily work. The governance roles, responsibilities and deliverables seemed to be in place on different organizational levels. However, closer inspection revealed challenges in the practical implementation. There were too many roles and hierarchy levels with information consistency problems in between. Prioritization of the high-level goals was unclear and made it difficult to plan and organize development work based on business value. The trace from high-level goals to more detailed plans was easily corrupted due to poor planning practices. Progress monitoring of daily work was poorly done and not linked to high-level plans. Consequently, the required feedback loops were inadequate, making it impossible for management to take corrective actions in time.