Changes Over Time in a Planned Inter-team Coordination Routine

Abstract

The benefits of agile ways of working in small teams have inspired larger organizations to implement large-scale agile frameworks. To manage dependencies between teams, there is a need for routines to plan and divide work between teams as well as routines to manage emerging dependency issues. These routines are often changed over time, but how tailoring is performed is not much studied. This study aims to fill that gap by presenting the tailoring of a planned coordination routine in three organizations over a period of one and a half year. By visiting planning sessions, 379 h of observation data were collected. Investigating details of this routine gives a much more dynamic view, compared to the static description presented in the framework. Different logics for tailoring could be seen in the three cases. For deciding on a cadence for the planning period, three diverse logics were used as the basis for the decisions: knowledge, time, and resources.