Which Factors Influence the Success of Communities of Practices in Large Agile Organizations, and How Are They Related?
Agile software development methods are intended to allow quick reactions to frequent changes. The success of these methods in small settings has motivated organizations to scale them. However, dependencies, collaboration, and alignment become challenging in this context. Communities of Practice (CoPs) can support addressing the mentioned problems, but organizations have struggled with their implementation. Also, existing research lacks empirical studies on factors influencing CoPs’ success across organizations. Thus, we ran an expert interview study investigating factors hindering and supporting the success of CoPs in scaled agile settings and explored how they influence each other. Our findings highlight that establishing and cultivating CoPs should be aligned with organizations’ and communities’ contexts. Key barriers are a lack of (attending) members, limited time due to daily work, and difficulties in the CoP organization. Especially value for organization and members, a suitable organization of CoP internal activities, and regular adaption and improvement foster success.
| Attribute | Value |
|---|---|
| Address | Porto, Portugal |
| Authors | Franziska Tobisch |
| Citation | Tobisch, F., Schmidt, J., Şentürk, A., & Matthes, F. (2025). Which Factors Influence the Success of Communities of Practices in Large Agile Organizations, and How Are They Related? In J. Filipe, M. Smialek, A. Brodsky, & S. Hammoudi (Eds.), Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems, ICEIS 2025 (pp. 15-26). (International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems, ICEIS - Proceedings; Vol. 2). Science and Technology Publications, Lda. |
| Key | To25a |
| Research project | |
| Title | Which Factors Influence the Success of Communities of Practices in Large Agile Organizations, and How Are They Related? |
| Type of publication | Conference |
| Year | 2025 |
| Team members | Alexandra Klymenko , Stephen Meisenbacher |
| Publication URL | https://www.scitepress.org/Papers/2025/132000/132000.pdf |
| Acronym | ICEIS |
| Project |