Building an Agile Approach to Individual Feedback
Seitsamo-Räsänen, Sanni (2021)
2021
All rights reserved. This publication is copyrighted. You may download, display and print it for Your own personal use. Commercial use is prohibited.
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2021052110167
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2021052110167
Tiivistelmä
The purpose of this thesis work was to investigate how an individual feedback process could be embedded into the case company. The research began when the case company had recently undergone organizational changes, where the company structure was modified to support better, agile ways of working and a Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) model. The aim was to solve practical problems and update practices, so a research-based development approach was used to structure the study.
The chosen method was action research. Action research is highly suitable to situations in which the members of the organization are interested in working together to solve problems or come up with improvements. The special feature of action research is that the researcher and the members of the organization can each play an active part in the process. Action research is an iterative process, where development cycles follow each other until the best solution has been identified. Due to the nature of the research, the materials were continuously collected during the research phase.
This study was conducted between October 2019 and April 2021. The development cycles took place in November–December 2019 and September–December 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic affected the schedule and data collection methods, as all the interviews and focus groups must be carried out virtually.
The data collection methods used for the main study were surveys, unstructured interviews and focus group interviews. Each development cycle had separate data collection methods, consisting mainly of unstructured and semi-structured interviews, as well as surveys.
Based on literature and the development cycles, a framework for individual feedback was created, as well as set of recommendations for implementing an individual feedback process in the case company. The outcomes of this study can be utilized in all teams of the case company that are structured similarly to the focus group.
The chosen method was action research. Action research is highly suitable to situations in which the members of the organization are interested in working together to solve problems or come up with improvements. The special feature of action research is that the researcher and the members of the organization can each play an active part in the process. Action research is an iterative process, where development cycles follow each other until the best solution has been identified. Due to the nature of the research, the materials were continuously collected during the research phase.
This study was conducted between October 2019 and April 2021. The development cycles took place in November–December 2019 and September–December 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic affected the schedule and data collection methods, as all the interviews and focus groups must be carried out virtually.
The data collection methods used for the main study were surveys, unstructured interviews and focus group interviews. Each development cycle had separate data collection methods, consisting mainly of unstructured and semi-structured interviews, as well as surveys.
Based on literature and the development cycles, a framework for individual feedback was created, as well as set of recommendations for implementing an individual feedback process in the case company. The outcomes of this study can be utilized in all teams of the case company that are structured similarly to the focus group.