Cross-team Decision-making: Challenges and Improvements in Large-scale Agile Organizations

Abstract

Decision-making in large-scale agile organizations is characterized by complexity and dynamic interactions, necessitating cross-team integration and collaboration. Agile methodologies prioritize responsiveness and adaptability, yet the distribution of decision-making authority across multiple teams implied by agile can result in difficulties and misalignments, a gap insufficiently addressed in existing research. This master’s thesis aims to explore the challenges and identify improvements associated with cross-team decision-making processes in large- scale agile organizations. Addressing this aim, a case study has been performed at Zenseact, a software development firm within the domain of autonomous driving, following a mixed- methods design consisting of a self-completion survey and semi-structured interviews. The study’s results point to challenges in three overall areas across teams, which were challenges with information flow, collaboration and understanding, and complexities and coordination. POs and Developers encounter such challenges most frequently, while Scrum Masters and ART Leadership encounter them least frequently. Furthermore, the results show that improving cross-team decision-making processes is a complex and inter-connected journey, and requires improvements in areas of communication, responsibility clarifications, documentation, collaboration, and maintaining a balance between adaptability and predictability. The categorization into three main challenge areas provides a structured taxonomy for future research. Additionally, the improvement ideas identified in this study may be relevant not only for large-scale agile organizations but also for decision-making in complex and dynamic organizational environments more broadly.