Agile Practices and Organizational Agility in Software Ecosystems

As software products increasingly become part of larger ecosystems, research and development (R&D) units of software producers organize themselves around projects to become more responsive to the environment. Organizations participating in software ecosystems must continuously adapt and adjust their software development and maintenance processes to drive both medium-term and long-term innovation. Agile methods and practices are widely adopted to guide the collaboration within and between project teams in software development. Moreover, when successfully attained, agility can drive innovation by enabling software development organizations to cope with technological changes and exploit emerging opportunities in software ecosystems. In this article, we focus on how organizations attain agility in the maintenance and development of software products. To answer this question, we conduct a longitudinal case study of Agile Scrum implementation in the R&D unit of a major supplier of telecommunication equipment. We investigate the emerging tensions and highlight practices used to balance these tensions in the Agile Scrum implementation. We identify four capabilities and ten practices that support effective collaboration and coordination in the development and maintenance of software products. The study offers practical guidance for R&D managers to attain agility in software ecosystems.