Agile Transformation Challenges and Solutions in Bureaucratic Government: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Information technology (IT) provides ease, convenience, and efficiency to run some errands. IT is not only facilitating services to customers, but also as the main backbone to drive business and management in an organization. A lot of IT projects were established to solve problems or improve business problems with IT. The urgency to quickly execute IT projects within a short time made some organizations have to consider changing their development methods from predictive (waterfall) to adaptive (agile). However, transforming to agile in public sector, especially a convoluted hierarchical organization like government, was not as easy as less bureaucratic ones. A layered bureaucracy could hinder the application of agile methods. This study was conducted to summarize challenges of agile transformation in a bureaucratic government and its solutions. A Systematic Literature Review (SLR) was applied as the main method of this research. There were 14 relevant papers from the past 5 years identified from six databases resulting in 20 challenges grouped into 4 categories using TOEI (technology-organization-environment-individual) framework. Several solutions to each challenge were mapped as a recommendation for other bureaucratic governments before transforming to agile. The findings can also be used for future research exploration of agile transformation challenges in other organization types.