Organisational factors and success of agile innovation practices at the project level: a comparative case study

The aim of this research is to explore how organisational factors, ranging from level of specialisation to co-location, interfere with successful implementation of agile innovation practices, which originated in small scale software contexts, and now being applied in projects at large scale and non-software business organisations. We have carried out a multiple case study using several projects within one manufacturing and one digital services firm. Employing a qualitative approach, we interviewed project managers and team members to understand how organisational factors interfere with agile practices. Our findings offer insights into effects of organisational factors on agile practices at the project level and how these differ from their known effects at the macro level. Our results also indicate that factors, such as co-location or availability of technical resources, may interact in non-trivial ways so as to allow new inroads into agile innovation practice in large scale organisations.