Master Thesis proposal Agile Transformation

Hammad Saif - 17156246 PROPOSAL MICM THESIS
Ovensen,2012,TheChallengesofBecomingAgile

PROPOSAL MICM THESIS
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RESEARCH PROPOSAL DRAFT MASTERS THESIS
2019
COMPANIES BECOMING AGILE
Strategic considerations for companies becoming Agile
HAMMAD SAIF
THE HAGUE UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCES
MASTERS OF INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATION
PROF: Dr. SCHELTE BELTMAN

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Table of Contents
1 INRODUCTION.............................................................................................................................................................................3
2 PROBLEM FIELD ANALYSIS......................................................................................................................................................3
3 GOAL OF THE RESEARCH.........................................................................................................................................................4
4 OBJECTIVE OF THE RESEARCH...............................................................................................................................................4
4.1 CENTRAL QUESTION ......................................................................................................................................................4
4.2 ASSOCIATED RESEARCH QUESTIONS .....................................................................................................................5
4.2.1 Theoretical Questions ...............................................................................................................................................5
4.2.2 Empirical Questions ...................................................................................................................................................5
5 LITERATURE REVIEW..................................................................................................................................................................6
6 RESEARCH METHEDOLOGY ....................................................................................................................................................8
6.1 APPROACH .........................................................................................................................................................................9
6.2 TARGET GROUP ............................................................................................................................................................. 10
6.3 DEALING WITH DATA.................................................................................................................................................. 10
6.3.1 DATA COLLECTION ................................................................................................................................................. 10
7 QUALITY CONCERNS.............................................................................................................................................................. 11
7.1 RELIABILITY...................................................................................................................................................................... 11
7.2 VALIDITY........................................................................................................................................................................... 11
8 PLANNING .................................................................................................................................................................................. 12
9 STRUCTURE OF THESIS.......................................................................................................................................................... 12
10 REFERENCES......................................................................................................................................................................... 14

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1 INRODUCTION
“You don't stop running because you get old, you get old because you stop running.”
― Christopher McDougall, Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has
Never Seen
“In today’s world, organizations in different branches are using more and more agile ways of working.
As the operational environment is constantly changing and organizations are forced to keep up the
pace to stay alive, they might not be able to survive by following only the old inflexible methods.
However, thorough consideration and preparation needs to be done before changing into agile. In
many cases, organizations are so used to follow traditional models, such as waterfall, that they do not
realize that the organization itself needs to be changed as well, not just the method they are following.”
(Broman, 2017, p1)
“In today’s fast-paced, fiercely competitive world of commercial new product
development, speed and flexibility are essential. Companies are increasingly realizing
that the old, sequential approach to developing new products simply won’t get the
job done.” - Takeuchi & Nonaka, 1986
This research focuses on getting the knowledge of the strategic factors which companies consider
while they make a decision to move towards agile form of working. The thesis will also try to focus on
the pitfalls and advantages of going Agile. Also the factors of disadvantages will be in consideration
for the purpose of evaluating and recommending future actions.
For the purpose of this research I will be studying two companies, i.e KNAB and AIRBUS GERMANY as
case study and will be having iterative sessions with the people working in the companies to get the
answers to my associated research question which will formulate the answers to my central question.
Although I deem it necessary to mention that this research is not focused on any company or industry,
therefore people interviewed will be having the respected background and can be also from different
companies or possibly consultants.
2 PROBLEM FIELD ANALYSIS
“As the use of agile methods has been a rising trend in many organizations in all branches and not
least in the software development, agile pitfalls is very actual topic. Despite the popularity of agile,
surprisingly many organizations do not familiarize themselves with careful preparations but are
getting an illusion that agile simply means lightening or even skipping the planning and project
management tasks.” (Broman, 2017,p3)

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The Agile project management methodology is recently being used globally by a lot of firms as a
means to counter the pitfalls or overcoming the disadvantages of traditional, front-end planning
methods that often lead to issues that take a lot of time to solve. Although a lot of authors have
pointed to the advantages of Agile, with its emphasis on individuals and interactions over processes,
customer collaboration over contracts and formal negotiations, and responsiveness over rigid
planning, there are, to date, very few large-scale, empirical studies to support the contention that
Agile methods can improve the likelihood of project success. Originally developed for the betterment
of software development, Agile is still dominant in IT industry. But due to its success it has now
spread to non-IT projects. (Serrador and Pinto, 2015)
Although a lot of research can be found on agile project management and Agile Software
development, which currently leads the transformation in Agile, there are very few studies which
focus on the aspects of what are the concerns , or strategic factor due to which companies want to
become agile and will that helps them eventually or not.
This research tends to extend the study in the relative field with reference to answering the central
question and all related sub questions. This research study tends to help organizations to identify
their reasons and prospects to become agile and would make them think about all the aspects that
needed to be communicated not only at the top level but also top down in the hierarchy.
3 GOAL OF THE RESEARCH
The Goal of this research is to identify the strategic factors which companies consider before making
a decision if they want to go through an Agile transformation, in order to enhance their productivity.
4 OBJECTIVE OF THE RESEARCH
The objective of this study can be defined in two portions:
a. To get a deep analysis why companies in general are moving towards Agile form of working and
what benefits they gain from moving to agile.
b. Do companies know the real meaning of becoming Agile?
4.1 CENTRAL QUESTION
Which strategic considerations can be identified for companies to become agile?
This study aims to identify the strategic considerations and the reasons for companies to take
decision of becoming Agile. What are the factors they consider and what they believe can be their
strategic advantage in doing do.

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4.2 ASSOCIATED RESEARCH QUESTIONS
4.2.1 Theoretical Questions
1. What does it means to become Agile?
2. How to know if the organization is becoming Agile?
3. When should a company become Agile?
4. Which sectors / industries / companies are mainly using agile form of working? And why ?
4.2.2 Empirical Questions
5. What are the pros and cons of becoming Agile.
6. Should it be limited to projects or should it be deployed across organizations. Why and How?
7. Should it only be limited to IT software only. why?
8. What is the difference between a agile project and agile company?
9. What are the Difficulties in working in an agile environment.
10. What role communication can play in companies to become agile?
4.2.2.1 Associated research question 1
This study will be answering the essence and meaning of becoming agile and what are the main
manifestos and principles which should be considered and to be embedded in while a company
makes a decision to become agile.
4.2.2.2 Associated question 2
This question will answer that what factor can be seen in organizations who claims to become
agile or tend to become agile.
This question will answer the turning point of the companies, where they actually decide why
they need to go agile.
This question will answer which sector or companies or even certain departments need to
become agile and what will be their reason. This will be done by examining the previous
researches are observations.
By interviewing the respective people the researcher will try to gather data and analyze what the
benefits and disadvantages for companies in becoming agile and why they should or should not
move towards becoming agile.
Through semi structure interviews with the professionals working in the field the researcher
tends to find out weather the implementation of agility will be limited to certain projects or it
can be across the board in an organization.
As seen Agile is very much on top in IT software development, the question tends to answer
that is it only the software development part which can be a perfect fit for Agility.

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The researcher with the help of iterative interview sessions would like to get the answer of this
question to have a clear idea about the differences between the two and the factors involved.
The interview with professionals will be focusing this point to have an in depth learning about
the pitfalls of agile.
The researcher would tend to derive the answer to this question buy asking professionals
working in the Agile environment, that how a good communication can help companies in
becoming agile and should it be a continuous process or not.
5 LITERATURE REVIEW
“On February 11–13, 2001, at The Lodge at Snowbird ski resort in the Wasatch mountains of Utah, 17
people met to talk, ski, relax and try to find common ground. What emerged was the Agile Software
Development Alliance.” (Fowler and Highsmith, 2001)
“A bigger gathering of organizational anarchists would be hard to find, so what emerged from this
meeting was symbolic—a Manifesto for Agile Software Development—signed by all participants.
Although the Manifesto provides some specifics, a deeper theme drives many Alliance members. At
the close of the two day meeting, Extreme Programming mentor Bob Martin joked that he was about
to make a "mushy" statement. Though tinged with humor, Bob's sentiments were shared by the
group—we all enjoyed working with people who shared compatible goals and values based on
mutual trust and respect, promoting collaborative, people-focused organizational models, and
building the types of professional communities in which we would want to work.” (Fowler and
Highsmith, 2001)
Hence came the Manifesto of becoming Agile by valuing (Fowler and Highsmith, 2001) :
1. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.
2. Working software over comprehensive documentation.
3. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation.
4. Responding to change over following a plan.
“Today we are facing an environment, which has become increasingly difficult to predict. Agile was a
new concept, aiming to respond to such uncertainty and the methodology has since been adopted
as a preference to developing software. According to some studies, it has a long history, with earliest
origins tracing back all the way to 1940’s. The principles and values, which would provide a definition
of Agile, referred to as “the Agile Manifesto” arose in 2001. At that time, the concept of Agile became
widely known and the implementation of the different frameworks began. Of those frameworks,
Scrum has been the most widely used framework in the world. (cPrime Worldwide. What is Agile?
What is Scrum? Retrieved 1.6.2018). As the methodology has since evolved, it has created other
frameworks, such as Lean software development and Kanban.” (Manninen, 2018, p.5)

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“One definition of the agile transformation describes it as “an act of transforming an organization’s
form or nature gradually to one that is able to embrace and thrive in a flexible, collaborative,
selforganizing, fast changing environment.” (Agile Transformation: Understanding What it Means to
be Agile. Retrieved 1.6.2018). Upon reflecting the agile transformation, the matter is seen as
something more than simply choosing a set of methods or practices to deliver in an agile
environment. Rather, it also involves the issues of culture change and mindset, to be able to support
a self-organized, collaborative environment inside an organization.” (Manninen, 2018, p.5)
“Change management is a major challenge for organisations today, and one of the biggest
challenges of change management is uncertainty. Companies are facing increasing competition,
globalisation, and digitalisation, and changes happen faster than before. This demands flexible
organisations able to change rapidly in uncertain environments, which makes plan-driven approaches
to change management less suited.” (Karud and Årvik, 2017, p. vii)
Becoming agile is also a change management, which companies actually are opting in today’s world
and more and more companies are moving towards it. But there is one thing which needs to be in
context and that is does everyone understand the meaning of becoming agile, its challenges, and are
they able to answer the question why are the becoming agile?
All too often, companies set out with the mission to "go agile" before truly understanding what that
means. Cracks begin to show and expectations are missed, leaving everyone questioning the value of
"going agile" altogether – and hurting your chances of ever getting there. (SUNTINGER, n.d.)
The truth is that going agile will result in more productive teams and faster delivery of projects, but
only if everyone can agree on the rules of the game. Join Heather Fleming and Justin Riservato, from
e-commerce giant Gilt, as they discuss why gaining consensus on the principles of agile is more
important than implementing a process. (SUNTINGER, n.d.)
Agile adoption is typically understood as a one-off organizational process involving a staged
selection of agiledevelopment practices. This view of agility fails to explain thedifferences in the pace
and effectiveness of individual teamstransitioning to agile development. Based on a Grounded
Theorystudy of 31 agile practitioners drawn from 18 teams acrossfive countries, we present a
grounded theory of becoming agileas a network of on-going transitions across five
dimensions:software development practices, team practices, managementapproach, reflective
practices, and culture. (Hoda and Noble, 2017, p.1)
Agile has been introduced as a faster, more adaptable way to creating software in a collaborative
environment. It is fact that agile methodologies have been widely adopted when managing software
projects. However, the core idea of Agile may be included into many business environments,
alongside but not limited to software. (Manninen, 2018)
“Before moving further with the concepts of agile change, it is interesting to consider what kind of
agile definitions there exist. As discussed earlier, agile refers to adaptability, flexibility and delivering
solutions at speed. The Agile Manifesto defined the core values and supporting principles, which act
as a guideline to introduce what agile is fundamentally about. This provides a good framework for
assessing how agile an organization is. However, to study how the agile values and principles
manifest inside organizations, it is necessary to examine which other agile definitions there exists.”
(Manninen, 2018)

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“Despite a software development related or a process-oriented perspective, Agile can be explored a
mindset – a way of thinking. Having an agile mindset involves absorbing agile into one’s identity to
the extent that becomes the new norm. While an organization may implement different tools,
practices and support various agile principles and values, the agile mindset is seen as sitting on top
of everything while wrapping everything together" (Measey, P; Radtac. 2015. p.11 in Manninen,
2018)
“Consequently, for Agile to find success within an organization, it can often be a question of
adopting the mindset. For example, when a new framework is introduced, individuals may begin to
implement it, however if not understanding why it is being used, the temptation of gradually going
back to old habits can be high. To look at the issue more practically, it is worthwhile to consider 19
how the agile mindset compares with a “fixed” mindset, which refers to the non-Agile way of
thinking.” (Manninen, 2018, p. 18)
Table 1 . Fixed and Agile Mindset (Agile Foundations: Principles, Practices and Frameworks, p.12
cited in (Manninen, 2018, p.19)
It is very common to find such differences in the mindset of different people. Being agile actually
speaks about the process of continuous evolving, accepting challenges, and not running from them,
it speaks about innovating and learning from failure. It speaks about looking into the positive side,
looking opportunities instead of threats. The fundamental concept of agile is continuous
improvement. (Manninen, 2018)
“Agile organizations do not tend punish employees for their mistakes. This is due to accepting the
idea that to be constantly able to improve can involve things occasionally going wrong. This applies
particularly to software design as no system is without flaw, but expectancy to having flaws, will
encourage putting in place necessary practices to monitor and respond to vulnerabilities. In terms of
project management, agile allows to experiment, then analyze whether experiments are bringing
value and abandon them if that is not the case.” (Manninen, 2018, p. 19)
6 RESEARCH METHEDOLOGY
When elaborating the methodology of practicing research, it seems appropriate to begin by asking:
What is research? A multitude of definitions trying to answer exactly that question exist side by side.
A multitude of definitions trying to answer exactly that question exist side by side. A few of them are
presented below.

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“Research is about asking and beginning to answer questions, seeking knowledge and understanding
of the world and its processes, and testing assumptions and beliefs” (Wisker,2008 in Ovesen,2012)
As the quote indicates, Wisker (2008) is interpreting research as a somewhat explorative practice with
the aim of understanding the world around us. Coombes (2001) is slightly more goal-oriented, and
almost political, in her definition of carrying out research:
“Research is a tool for getting you from point A to point B. You wish to prove an idea – research it.
You wish to disprove an idea – research it. You think that fact ABC is incorrect – research it, or that
fact ABC is correct – research it. Research is simply a method for investigating and collection
information.” (Coombes, 2001 in Ovesen, 2012)
“Methodology is the way in which the researcher chooses to deal with a specific research question
(which may consequently result in a problem definition) and how the research is then conducted”
(Jonker 2010 in Yliperttula, 2017, p.19 )
Given the nature of the question in context about companies going agile and their strategic factor,
this research will be qualitative in nature will be very much exploratory.
The researcher will be active in searching on internet, books and scholarly articles, written on the
Agile form of working and will be looking into the facts that has been written on the fact of the
question/s in context.
6.1 APPROACH
Before turning to the practical aspects of undertaking the research activities, this chapter presents
the basic research strategy that the project has been pursuing. The inductive and the deductive
research approaches have traditionally been predominant in research, and today most research is
still practiced through one or the other. In nature the two approaches differ in their opposing
starting points in respectively theory or empirical data. While the purely inductive approach induces
generalizations from real-life observations, the deductive approach attempts to verify (or falsify
from a critical rational point of view) a constructed theory or hypothesis through observations in
order to accomplish a higher level of insight (Kovács & Spens, 2005). 1 below and figure 2 next
page illustrates the two approaches.
FIG 1.
PURELY DEDUCTIVE RESEARCH PROCESS
(Kovács & Spens, 2005 cited in Ovesen, 2012) .

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FIG 2.
The Approach of research in this case will be partly inductive and partly deductive. The research
have prior knowledge on the topic and he already know that a lot has been written on the topic of
companies moving towards agile and agile project management, therefore the prior data and
existing theoretical knowledge from the researches can be obtained which can then be able to
refine the problem and question in context. This will help researcher to be able to connect with the
people in respective industry and get the first hand primary information which will eventually help
in formulating the conclusion and recommendation of this thesis.
6.2 TARGET GROUP
Target group in this research will be Managers, Scrum Masters, Agile Trainers, Agile /Change
Management Consultants or people who are decision makers in transforming companies towards
agile implementation
6.3 DEALING WITH DATA
When it comes to dealing with data there are usually two basic steps involved
1. Data Collection
2. Data Analysis
6.3.1 DATA COLLECTION
When it comes to data collection, it is solely focused on the type of data that is required to
formulate the research and get the desirable answers to the research questions in context. For the
question/s which are being focused in this research, the required and desired data can be only of
qualitative nature as it is impossible to judge the strategic factors to judge on any kind of
quantitative basis.
Some of the most used qualitative methods for data collection are participant observation,
interviews, and focus groups, and in this project the two first mentioned are used. (Ovesen, 2012)
PURELY INDUCTIVE RESEARCH PROCESS
(Kovács & Spens, 2005 cited in Ovesen, 2012) .

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6.3.1.1 Primary data
Primary data collection will be based on iterative interviews with the concerned people. The
interview will be semi structure. Also the primary data will be collected by observations of the
companies used in the research.
6.3.1.2 Secondary data
Secondary data will be collected solely by focusing on the researches that have been done in
past and also through the articles written by the gurus of the field.
In general the whole data collection method will be based on semi structure interviews
aligned with case study of the topic ion context. According to Yin (2003) “a case study is
an empirical inquiry that a) investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life
context, especially when b) the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not
clearly evident.” Yin (2003) continues: “In other words, you would use the case study
method because you deliberately wanted to cover contextual conditions”. (Ovesen, 2012)
7 QUALITY CONCERNS
7.1 RELIABILITY
Reliability refers to whether your data collection techniques and analytic procedures would produce
consistent findings if they were repeated by you on another occasion or if they were replicated by a
different researcher (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2016, p. 202).
Ensuring reliability is not necessarily easy and a number of threats to reliability can be identified as
the error of participant during a questionnaire filling or interview. The biasness of participant is also
on factor that is in account for. There is also a factor of researcher not able to get the true meaning
of his/her interviewees and also Research being biased about the topic and forming his/her own
opinion and not having a clear head about the question in context (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill,
2016, p. 202).
Therefore there are always concerns about the reliability of the data that has been gathered and
put up in the thesis. What the researcher in this case will make sure is go to the utmost level of
being focused and un biased and keep an open mind to evaluate the data gathered during the
process of research.
7.2 VALIDITY
“This first aspect of validity is sometimes termed measurement validity and is associated with
different types of validity designed to assess this intention. These include face validity, construct
validity, content validity and predictive validity. The second aspect of validity refers to internal
validity and the third aspect to external validity.” (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2016, p. 202)
Internal validity is demonstrated when the research show up a relationship between two variable.
This can be gained by having a statistical data to show outcomes. A questionnaire and the response
can be evaluated to get the internal validity. (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2016, p. 203). “This
concept is associated with positivist and quantitative research: it can be applied to causal or

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explanatory studies, but not to exploratory or purely descriptive studies.” (Saunders, Lewis and
Thornhill, 2016, p. 203).
External validity actually takes in concerns the applicability of research to be generalized to other
similar groups / industry / company etc. For example the research study of one department can be
used in other departments or a research in one company in the same industry can be used in other
company, and to what extent. (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2016, p. 204).
8 PLANNING
9 STRUCTURE OF THESIS
The structure of the thesis will be as follows
Preface
Acknowledgements
List of contributing papers
1. Introduction
a. What does Agile means
b. Research aims & objectives
c. Research question & Sub-questions
d. Research strategy
e. Limitations

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f. Structure of the thesis
2. Literature Review
a. Introduction
b. Literature on Agile
c. Agile Pitfalls
d. Introduction of companies following agile
e. Introduction of Knab
f. Introduction of Airbus Germany
g. Agile misunderstood
3. Research Methodology
a. Introduction
b. Research design
c. Ethics
d. Methodological implications
i. Type of investigation
ii. Data gathering methods
iii. Sample selection
4. Data Analysis and Results
a. Introduction
b. Description of field research
c. Processing answers of the interviewees & the questionnaire
d. Presentation of data
i. Data structuring and processing
e. Interpretation and analysis of data
f. Conclusions regarding the data
5. Conclusions and Recommendations
a. Conclusions
b. Recommendations and guidelines
c. Recommendations for further research (Discussion)
d. Recommendations for other companies (Reflection)
References
Appendices
Research Proposal
Interviews
Tables
Figures

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10 REFERENCES
Broman, S. (2017). [online] p.3. Available at:
http://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/130547/Broman_Susanna.pdf?sequence=1
[Accessed 17 Jan. 2019].
Broman, S. (2017). [online] p.1. Available at:
http://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/130547/Broman_Susanna.pdf?sequence=1
Fowler, M. and Highsmith, J. (2001). The Agile Manifesto. [online] Available at:
http://users.jyu.fi/~mieijala/kandimateriaali/Agile-Manifesto.pdf [Accessed 17 Jan. 2019].
Hoda, R. and Noble, J. (2017). Becoming Agile: A Grounded Theory of AgileTransitions in Practice.
[online] Available at:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318576089_Becoming_Agile_A_Grounded_Theory_of_Agil
e_Transitions_in_Practice [Accessed 18 Jan. 2019].
Karud, K. and Årvik, K. (2017). Agile Change Management. [online] p.vii. Available at:
https://brage.bibsys.no/xmlui/bitstream/handle/11250/2470471/16617_FULLTEXT.pdf?sequence=1
Manninen, V. (2018). THE AGILE TRANSFORMATION. [online] p.5. Available at:
https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/151049/manninen_venla.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowe
d=y [Accessed 18 Jan. 2019].
Ovesen, N. (2012). The Challenges of Becoming agile. [online] Available at:
http://vbn.aau.dk/files/67036420/Ovesen_2012_The_Challenges_of_Becoming_Agile_WEB.pdf
Serrador, P. and Pinto, J. (2015). Does Agile work? — A quantitative analysis of agile
project. International Journal of Project Management, [online] Volume 33(Issue 5). Available at:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0263786315000071 [Accessed 17 Jan. 2019].
SUNTINGER, M. (n.d.). Stop "Going Agile"!. [online] Available at:
https://www.atlassian.com/agile/advantage/going-agile [Accessed 18 Jan. 2019].

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