An approach to align socio-technical dependencies in large-scale software development

Seeking the advantages delivered by agile methods in small-scale software development, large organisations are also adopting agile methods. However, scaling results in a huge growth of socio-technical dependencies that can lead to waiting time, delays, and defects and hinder the teams’ ability to recognize their own responsibilities. This research proposes an approach to enable teams’ autonomy and clarifies teams’ responsibility assignments by aligning socio-technical dependencies. By utilising compile-time, run-time, and task dependencies, our approach identifies the wasteful dependencies between the social structures (teams) and the corresponding technical structures (architecture) and also suggests improvements. The initial results suggest that the approach correctly identifies the wasteful dependencies that are hindering teams’ responsibility assignments. The suggested solution proposals are also considered useful. Awareness of such wasteful dependencies is the first step toward being able to handle them successfully.