Enhancing Product and Service Capability Through Scaling Agility in a Global Software Vendor Environment

Agile software development has become increasingly common in software vendor organisations, and their impact on practices and roles is now extending beyond the project level across the entire organisation. In this study, we investigate how a major Australia-based multi-site global software vendor transitioned from a structured to a Scaled Agile approach. We demonstrate how practices and roles in a distributed software vendor evolved over time across the organisation in an on-going process of their global agile transformation. Through this elaboration, we identify three major agile transitions and the contribution of a scaled agile approach in the building of market driven capabilities. We theorised a relationship between increased dynamic capabilities of the firm and a scaled agile transition. Supporting our view, we noted that agile practices and roles across the organisation contributed as expected to improved internal process capability. More surprisingly, they were also found to increase our vendor's ability both to identify and take advantage of opportunities and to innovate in global product and service development and delivery.