Assessing the adoption level of scaled agile development: a maturity model for Scaled Agile Framework

Although the agile software development approaches have gained wide acceptance in practice, the concerns regarding the scalability and integration of agile practices in traditional large-scale system development projects are prevailing. Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) has emerged as a solution to address some of these concerns. Despite few encouraging results, case studies indicate several challenges of SAFe adoption. Currently, there is a lack of a well-structured gradual approach for establishing SAFe. Before and during SAFe adoption, organizations can benefit greatly from a uniform model for assessing the current progress, and establishing a roadmap for the initiative. To address this need, we developed a maturity model that provides guidance for software developing organizations in defining a roadmap for adopting SAFe. The model can also be used to assess the level of SAFe adoption. We took an existing agile maturity model as a basis for agile practices and extended it with practices that are key to SAFe. The model was developed and refined with industry experts using the Delphi technique. A case study was conducted in a large organization where we evaluated the model by applying it to assess the level of SAFe adoption. Keywords— agile software development; agile development in large-scale, scaled agile framework; maturity model; Delphi study. 1 Corresponding author. Email: [email protected], T: +31 4