Master's Thesis Nina Harders

Identifying recurring challenges and best practices of agile coaches and scrum master and documenting them as a part of a large-scale agile development pattern language

Motivation

With the success of Agile methods for small teams, big organizations become more and more interested in applying these methods to large teams. While small teams already face a variety of challenges coming with Agile methods, there are even more impediments to overcome in Large-Scale Agile methods, such as Large Scale Scrum or Extreme Programming. One example is the location of team members, as small teams are mostly located in the same office, while large teams may be separated onto different continents. As a consequence, the teams are facing communication problems, e.g. unreliable internet connection during phone calls or organizing meetings in several time zones. 

Since every stakeholder of an agile project has different challenges, the amount of challenges and possible solutions is wide. Hence, there is a demand to find out recurring challenges of all groups of stakeholders and document relevant solutions to these challenges. 

Goal

The goal of this thesis is to provide solutions in the form of patterns for recurring challenges of the two stakeholders Agile Coach and Scrum Master. For this, a pattern language for Large-Scale Agile Development will be created and evaluated. Further, the considered stakeholders will be interviewed to identify recurring challenges they face when applying Large-Scale Agile methods.  Additionally, the stakeholders will explain their solution to these challenges. 

The final artefact of this thesis will be a set of patterns addressing challenges and best practices of Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches in Large-Scale Agile Development. 

Research Questions

1. What are recurring challenges of Agile Coaches and Scrum Masters in Large-Scale Agile Development?
2. What are best practices for addressing recurring challenges of Agile Coaches and Scrum Masters in Large-Scale Agile Development?
3. How can these Best Practices be documented as part of a Large-Scale Agile Development Pattern Language? 

Sources