Improving ISD Agility in Fast-Moving Software Organizations

Fast-moving software organizations must respond quickly to changing technological options and market trends while delivering high-quality services at competitive prices. Improving agility of information systems development (ISD) may reconcile these inherent tensions, but previous research of agility predominantly focused separately on managing either the individual project or the organization. Limited research has investigated the management that ties the agility of individual projects with the company agility characterizing fast-moving organizations. This paper reports an action research study on how to improve ISD agility in a fast-moving software organization. The study maps central problems in the ISD management to direct improvements of agility. Our following intervention addressed method improvements in defining types of ISD by customer relations and integrating the method with the task management tool used by the organization. The paper discusses how the action research contributes to our understanding of ISD agility in fast-moving software organizations with a framework for mapping and evaluating improvements of agility. The action research specifically points out that project managers need to attend to the company’s agility in relating to customers, that company agility links to project agility, and that this requires light method and tool support.