A Paradox Lens to Systems Development Projects: The Case of the Agile Software Development

Abstract

Research into organizations has concluded that organizational effectiveness is paradoxical (i.e., effective organizations must have simultaneously contradictory, even mutually exclusive, attributes). Although systems development projects constitute temporary organizations, researchers have largely omitted the paradox lens in their context. In this paper, I move toward rectifying the situation by focusing specifically on the agile software development (ASD) as a timely systems development approach in practice. I identify 11 interrelated and actable paradoxical tensions concerning the priority, structure, and execution of systems development projects. Each tension imposes competing demands on projects. To address them requires human ingenuity and judgement, though systems development methods and approaches can provide aid. I show that ASD comprises mechanisms for that purpose largely due to the reflective nature of the ASD process in which each retrospective assesses what went well in the previous sprint (iteration) and what could be improved in the next sprint. At the same time, ASD has built-in flexibility that makes it possible to adapt the method-in-use when deemed necessary or reasonable.

Tensions and ambidexterity: a case study of an agile project at a government agency

“…In the study by Lüscher and Lewis [54], it turned out to be the case that performing tensions arose when managers' roles became more blurred and multiplied in response to conflicting demands during major organizational changes. According to Iivari [18], the paradoxical lens has not been explicitly used to understand software development and therefore the references mentioned have been taken from the organizational research field. However, when implementing the Agile way of working as a replacement for a plandriven way, roles and responsibilities will change, something that affects everyone.…”

“…An organization's diversity in terms of its ways of handling tensions by doing two different things simultaneously is captured in the concept of organizational ambidexterity [59], [60], [61]. The concepts of paradox, tensions, and ambidexterity are closely connected [19], [46], but the ambidexterity literature often focuses on a single tension between exploitation and exploration [18].…”

“…This study responds to the call by Werder and Heckmann [17] that future research should be about "investigating ambidexterity that thrives as a result of tension". The lens of paradoxical tensions has developed in organizational theory but has received too little attention in past research on software development [18] and project management [19]. A recent study by Iivari [19] introduces a framework of eleven paradoxical tensions concerning the priority, structure, and execution of projects, wishing to encourage future research on the paradoxical tensions of project management.…”

A framework for paradoxical tensions of project management

“…I was able to identify only fourteen relevant papers, each of them proposing its own set of tensions. The aim of this paper is to introduce a framework of more general and typical paradoxical tensions originating from the IS development context [9].…”

“…The focus lies in sets (n > 1) of co-existing paradoxical tensions rather than in a single tension. The proposed framework originates from the information systems (IS) development and the agile software development (ASD) context -as explained in the accompanying paper [9]. Therefore, the framework is most relevant in the case of designoriented projects.…”