Agile software development and IT-architecture interactions in the public sector

Agile software development and IT-architecture interactions in the public sector: A multi-case study approach to identify whether these roles are complementary or counterproductive

van der Vliet, Stan (TU Delft Technology, Policy and Management)

Janssen, M.F.W.H.A. (mentor)
van der Voort, H.G. (graduation committee)
Heijnen, W.G.P. (graduation committee)

Delft University of Technology

Complex Systems Engineering and Management (CoSEM)

2022-07-07

Large software projects often overrun costs, development time and do not deliver what has been envisioned by the customer. An important factor contributing to these cost overruns is the mismatch in the approaches of IT-architects and agile software development roles. In literature there are hints that complementary added value could be achieved from interaction of these roles. For practitioners there is need for governance strategies that improve the added value of combining these roles and their approaches in a complementary way. To identify how governance strategies help to obtain complementary added value from IT-architecture and agile software developer interactions this research used a multi-case study approach with exploratory and theory building focus. Interviews with IT-architecture and agile developer roles were used to collect data and compose case studies. This approach allowed to identify governance strategies with governance strategies that were used in practice. Multiple cases were chosen to analyse governance strategies across cases, which improved generalisability. The results include a topology of interaction models, a set of added value and problems found in the cases, related to their interaction model and a set of descriptions of governance strategies that could be used to achieve complementary added value from the interaction of software architects and agile development teams.The case studies and results provide practitioners with the opportunity to update their knowledge and change their perspective on interaction of IT-architecture and agile development roles. Future research could expand the results in terms of breadth and depth of organisations.

IT-architecture
Agile Software Development
Governance
Agile
Enterprise architecture
Software architecture
Solution architecture
Product owner
public sector
Government
Complementarity
Added Value
Tensions
Bottlenecks
problems
Case study
Multi-case study
Exploratory
Theory building
Explanatory
Governance strategies
Strategy
IT
BPM
Agility
Software development
Complex systems
ICT
ICT Architecture

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:690fa42f-7640-452b-a0cb-9c4d135e5902

Student theses

master thesis

© 2022 Stan van der Vliet