Which Factors Influence the Success of Communities of Practices in Large Agile Organizations, and How Are They Related?

Franziska Tobisch, Johannes Schmidt, Ahmet Şentürk, Florian Matthes

2025

Abstract

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.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Tobisch F., Schmidt J., Şentürk A. and Matthes F. (2025). Which Factors Influence the Success of Communities of Practices in Large Agile Organizations, and How Are They Related?. In Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Volume 2: ICEIS; ISBN 978-989-758-749-8, SciTePress, pages 15-26. DOI: 10.5220/0013200000003929

in Bibtex Style

@conference{iceis25,
author={Franziska Tobisch and Johannes Schmidt and Ahmet Şentürk and Florian Matthes},
title={Which Factors Influence the Success of Communities of Practices in Large Agile Organizations, and How Are They Related?},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Volume 2: ICEIS},
year={2025},
pages={15-26},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0013200000003929},
isbn={978-989-758-749-8},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Volume 2: ICEIS
TI - Which Factors Influence the Success of Communities of Practices in Large Agile Organizations, and How Are They Related?
SN - 978-989-758-749-8
AU - Tobisch F.
AU - Schmidt J.
AU - Şentürk A.
AU - Matthes F.
PY - 2025
SP - 15
EP - 26
DO - 10.5220/0013200000003929
PB - SciTePress