JultikaUniversity of Oulu repository

Abstract

Agile methods are a rising star and a proven concept in software development processes. They have revolutionized the ways of project management and are becoming more common than older methods day by day. This thesis studied in which way small organizations are different to large organizations, what kind of social and environmental variables there are in small organizations and how well most used agile methods fit into small organization environment. This thesis was conducted as a literature review. In this thesis, it was concluded that agile methods are suitable for small organizations when compared with differences between small and large organizations environmental and social variables. Major differences between small and large organizations being that small organizations are working in constantly changing and turbulent environment, which requires flexibility and ability to adapt. Also, small organizations are suitable for agile methods due to their social aspects, mostly for their need for effective communication and flexibility. In the future, the subject of this thesis should be headed more towards large organizations, because fitting of agile methods into large organization environment has been studied less, mostly since agile methods are naturally suitable for small organizations. It is also important to head the research towards large organizations, because it has been concluded that it is indeed the large organizations that have had problems with implementation of agile methods.