Using agile practices to spark innovation in a small to medium sized business

Abstract

The media industry is challenged to find new lines of business as technology redefines content, distribution and customer expectations. This is a case study of Oxygen Media where a CEO leading an innovation program partnered with her agile software development team. It spans nine months and details how top-down, bottom-up interaction lead to a new consumer software initiative. The strategy described evolved as the sum of small decisions taken over time driven by vision and filtered through Oxygen's corporate culture. At each step, the company's actions were informed by Scrum/XP practices and values. This paper draws support for Oxygen Media's emergent strategy in Nonaka and Takeuchi's five phase model for organizational knowledge creation. This model explains why Oxygen Media has had initial success in its innovation effort. It is also instructive where the model departs from Oxygen Media's strategy and points to challenges yet to be addressed by the company. © 2007 IEEE.