Blue Cloud: Organizational Change and Agile Implementation Analysis

This report analyzes the implementation of Agile methodology within Blue Cloud, a software development company. It begins by identifying the trigger event that led CEO Shel Skinner to adopt Agile, which was the desire for more efficient product delivery and improved customer satisfaction. The report then evaluates the change implementation steps, highlighting the shift from a traditional sequential development cycle to an Agile approach emphasizing teamwork, collaboration, and frequent releases. It discusses the behavioral changes required of employees, such as increased interaction, continuous learning, and a flexible attitude. The report also examines the varied responses to Agile among Blue Cloud employees, attributing them to factors like peer pressure and work pressure. Finally, it suggests future plans for Skinner, including addressing employee concerns, collecting feedback, and potentially amending the Agile methodology to ensure better productivity and employee satisfaction. The report concludes that while Agile presents advantages, addressing its disadvantages is crucial for Blue Cloud's success.

Running head: ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE & DEVELOPMENT WITHIN BLUE CLOUD
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE & DEVELOPMENT WITHIN BLUE CLOUD
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

1ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE & DEVELOPMENT WITHIN BLUE CLOUD
Executive summary:
Agile business methodology is used by most of the companies in today’s world due to the
increasing challenges in the organization regarding product delivery deadlines as well as the
efficiency of the managers in managing the their teams. There are different challenges such as
employee vandalism as well as lack of meeting deadlines of crucial tasks in the big
organizations.
This report will study the case of an organization called Blue cloud and explain in details
the different aspects of incorporating agile business methodology within its working operations.
By the end of the report, the reader will have a clear understanding of the different aspects such
as the required changes in the behaviors of the employees that is expected from them in order to
successfully incorporate the agile business method in the work culture of Blue Cloud. The future
plans that Shel Skinner should implement being the CEO of the organization shall also be
discussed and recommendations provided.

2ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE & DEVELOPMENT WITHIN BLUE CLOUD
Table of Contents
Introduction:....................................................................................................................................3
The reason that led led Shel Skinner to adopt agile methodology:.................................................3
Evaluation of change implementation within blue cloud:...............................................................4
Behavioral changes required by Blue Cloud employees:................................................................5
Plans that Skinner should implement now:.....................................................................................5
Conclusion:......................................................................................................................................6
References:......................................................................................................................................7

3ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE & DEVELOPMENT WITHIN BLUE CLOUD
Introduction:
Blue cloud development is a software development company. It has planes to adopt the
agile business methodology in order to further improve its business operations, and help the
managers within the organization take better business decisions in a more efficient way.
The following report will highlight the different aspects of the agile business model and
how it will be incorporated within Blue Cloud. Shel Skinner who is the chief executive officer of
the organization has decided to adopt this business model since the professional behavior of the
employees have to be further improved, which in turn can improve their productivity. He also
aims to improve the interaction levels with the customers to improve the customer satisfaction
thereby improving business outcomes. The following report will highlight the different aspects
of implementing agile business methodology within the organization.
The reason that led led Shel Skinner to adopt agile methodology:
The traditional cycle of development within Blue cloud used a deliberate sequential
development with verification, which included testing as well as debugging the programs, which
would often take place after the team members have worked on it for around a year or more. This
was a concern for Shel Skinner and he had thought about coming up with a business model
which could deliver efficient and accurate results in lesser time. He has rightly said that there
was no point in wasting a complete year just to check if their products were working fine. That is
when he decided to come up with the agile methodology where in there would be no alpha beta
testing of the software’s. Instead, he decided to come up with a business strategy in which more
products would be launched earlier than ever and it would be on a frequent basis (Moniruzzaman

4ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE & DEVELOPMENT WITHIN BLUE CLOUD
& Hossain, 2013). This would not only help him allow more flexibility to the managers but also
ensure improved customer satisfaction.
Evaluation of change implementation within blue cloud:
The agile business methodology focusses more on teamwork as well as more interaction
and involvement of the team members towards a common goal of meeting targets and delivering
the results on time. Additionally, this model states that more products will be launched on a
frequent basis and they will also be released much early which instigated Shel Skinner even
more because he wanted improved productivity in less time. Daily “scrum’s” would be ensured
by the teams from different department and functions that were cross-functional in nature. This
ensured a better business flexibility within Blue Cloud (Schönig et al., 2015). The cross-
functional behavior of the teams in the agile methodology ensured that all the concerns related to
any given project were all addressed in time and that the managers were always updated with the
progress of the projects. The team members were also equipped and on boarded with all the
necessary information and tools at all points of time (Krawatzeck & Dinter, 2015). Scrum
methodology as defined by Skinner is characterized by:
- A backlog of prioritized pending work.
- Backlog items that are largely fixed are completed in short iterations.
- A daily team meeting or briefing among the team members (known as a scrum), at which
the managers explain progress status, and upcoming tasks and concerns are raised in the
hurdle (Karagiannis, 2015).
- A brief session of planning wherein backlog items are defined.
- A brief retrospective of heartbeat, wherein team members reflect on their experiences of
past sprints (Stavru, 2014).

5ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE & DEVELOPMENT WITHIN BLUE CLOUD
After a year of applying the agile methodology, Skinner was unsure about whether to
further continue it since many employees complaint about it. However, many employees were
happy about it and were comfortable to continue it in the future. Since majority of the employees
were in support of the agile methodology it can be further continues and eventually it will be
successful in a wider scale within Blue Frog (Stoica, Mircea & Ghilic-Micu 2013).
Behavioral changes required by Blue Cloud employees:
Behavioral changes are needed by the employees in order to implement the agile
methodology within Blue cloud. Employees have to interact more within themselves at the work
place, as well with the customers in any business situations and negotiations, therefore they have
to mingle more freely with their colleagues. Employees have to always go through training
models to ensure they remain updated with the latest technologies so that they can exhibit their
technical excellence during the course of the project lifecycle (Zeising, Schönig & Jablonski,
2014). Employees also have to have a flexible and dynamic attitude in the work place so that
they can efficiently handle and cope up with any unforeseen situations. The developers should be
motivated to accept the changing requirements of the clients on a daily basis and therefore
remain updated with all the latest technologies and workplace updates. They should develop a
more flexible mindset in order to work with agile methodology (Dingsøyr & Moe, 2013).
Plans that Skinner should implement now:
Skinner has tested the agile methodology and he has seen how effective it has been in
project management life cycle after a year’s implementation. He has a mixed set of feedbacks
from the employees and presently he is unsure whether to continue the business model further in
the working operations within Blue Cloud. Some of the employees are satisfied with the dynamic

6ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE & DEVELOPMENT WITHIN BLUE CLOUD
nature of the methodology and want to continue with it whereas some of the employees have
shown their disregard for it and they do not want to follow the agile business methodology
further. In the earlier alpha beta manual software testing business model, which was used by
Blue Cloud, the employees seemed to have a lazy attitude (Turk, France & Rumpe, 2014). This
was because the deadlines assigned to them for the final submission of their tasks was quite a
long time so the employees did not show a sense of urgency at any given phase of the project
lifecycles. However, the agile business model have made the employees even more responsive to
deadlines and the managers have been assigned more responsibilities than before. This in turn
has improved the productivity of the employees and hence it should be further continues in the
system to ensure better productivity in the organization (Abrahamsson et al., 2017).
Presently Skinner should try to collect feedbacks form the employees who did not show
much interest in the agile business methodology and try to understand their concerns so that
changes and amendments can be implemented in the agile business methodology. This will not
only ensure improved productivity by the continuation of the agile business methodology but
also ensure that the employees have no concerns in following it .Therefore, employee job
satisfaction will also be in place, which will also improve customer satisfaction.
Conclusion:
Therefore, it can be concluded from the report that although Agile business methodology
is an extremely important business methodology it has certain disadvantages such as peer
pressure as well as work pressure from the top management within the organizations which can
often lead to employee dissatisfaction. If these aspects are properly addressed and resolved in the
implementation of the agile business methodology then it can take the business success of Blue
Cloud to newer heights.

7ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE & DEVELOPMENT WITHIN BLUE CLOUD

8ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE & DEVELOPMENT WITHIN BLUE CLOUD
References:
Abrahamsson, P., Salo, O., Ronkainen, J., & Warsta, J. (2017). Agile software development
methods: Review and analysis. arXiv preprint arXiv:1709.08439.
Dingsøyr, T., & Moe, N. B. (2013). Research challenges in large-scale agile software
development. ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes, 38(5), 38-39.
Karagiannis, D. (2015, October). Agile modeling method engineering. In Proceedings of the
19th Panhellenic Conference on Informatics (pp. 5-10). ACM.
Krawatzeck, R., & Dinter, B. (2015). Agile business intelligence: collection and classification of
agile business intelligence actions by means of a catalog and a selection
guide. Information Systems Management, 32(3), 177-191.
Moniruzzaman, A. B. M., & Hossain, D. S. A. (2013). Comparative Study on Agile software
development methodologies. arXiv preprint arXiv:1307.3356.
Schönig, S., Cabanillas, C., Jablonski, S., & Mendling, J. (2015, June). Mining the organizational
perspective in agile business processes. In International Conference on Enterprise,
Business-Process and Information Systems Modeling (pp. 37-52). Springer, Cham.
Stavru, S. (2014). A critical examination of recent industrial surveys on agile method
usage. Journal of Systems and Software, 94, 87-97.
Stoica, M., Mircea, M., & Ghilic-Micu, B. (2013). Software Development: Agile vs.
Traditional. Informatica Economica, 17(4).
Turk, D., France, R., & Rumpe, B. (2014). Limitations of agile software processes. arXiv
preprint arXiv:1409.6600.

9ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE & DEVELOPMENT WITHIN BLUE CLOUD
Zeising, M., Schönig, S., & Jablonski, S. (2014, October). Towards a common platform for the
support of routine and agile business processes. In Collaborative Computing:
Networking, Applications and Worksharing (CollaborateCom), 2014 International
Conference on (pp. 94-103). IEEE.