CASE STUDY OF CHANGE MANAGEMENT

IN SIMCENTRIC TECHNOLOGIES

149057M, 149058R, 149068X, 149061U

MBA in IT University of Moratuwa
MN 5201 Organizational Behaviour& Management

Contents
Chapter 1: Executive Summery ..................................................................................................................... 3
Chapter 2: Introduction and Objectives........................................................................................................ 5
Chapter 3: Methodology Statement ............................................................................................................. 8
3.1 Data Gathering Methodologies: .......................................................................................................... 8
3.2 Data analysis Methodologies: ............................................................................................................. 9
Chapter 4: Literature Review ...................................................................................................................... 10
4.1 Reasons for software development project failures .......................................................................... 10
4.2 Why Agile Methodology .................................................................................................................. 10
4.3 Agile Principals................................................................................................................................. 11
4.4 Agile Development Methods ............................................................................................................ 12
Roles ................................................................................................................................................... 12
Scrum initialization ............................................................................................................................. 12
4.5 Agile Meetings .................................................................................................................................. 13
4.6 John Kotters eight step plan............................................................................................................. 14
Chapter 5: Organizational Context ............................................................................................................. 15
5.1 Main consumers of the company ...................................................................................................... 17
5.2 Organizational Culture and Structure ............................................................................................... 17
5.3 The organizational change of introducing Agile methodology ......................................................... 20
Chapter 6: Issues to be addressed .............................................................................................................. 21
Chapter 7: Report Key Findings................................................................................................................... 24
Chapter 8: Discussion and Analysis ............................................................................................................. 31
Chapter 9: Conclusion and Recommendation ............................................................................................ 34
Chapter 10: Personal Reflective evaluation ................................................................................................ 36
References

41

Chapter 12:Appendix .................................................................................................................................. 42

12.1 Questionnaire .................................................................................................................................. 42

Chapter 1: Executive Summery

Simcentric Technologies is a medium scale company which provides fire simulation software
applications for overseas markets. The main company is located in Australia and the branches
are established in Bohemia and Sri Lanka. The company is specialized in the development of
external programs which can connect and control elements inside the 3D simulation platform.
The organizational structure is based on functional structure.
The company has developed number of battle simulation applications for American Army,
British Army, Bohemian Army and French Army successfully and those software systems are
running well without major issues. But the management decided to introduce agile software
development methodology for their software development processes because they had a major
issue in handling rapid requirement changes. The main objectives of the change were enhancing
the productivity and quality of the software, deliver on time and handle changing requirements.
Agile software methods have grabbed the attention of software engineers and software architects
worldwide. Approximately 70% of software projects fail because of not meeting the timeline,
cost overrun and customers requirements are not satisfied. Agile methodology addresses the
above problems in a satisfactory way.
The main objectives of this report are to analyze the change which has been introduced to the
organization, the background for the change, reaction of the employees, challenges in the process
and advantages and disadvantages of the new method.
To achieve above mentioned goals; interviews, questionnaires have been used to collect
information. Data has been analyzed using standard tools. Number of articles, journals and web
sites were referred to become familiar about the agile methodology.
The organization has used John Kotters eight step plan to introduce the change. As the first step
the management has scheduled a meeting with the CEO of the company and got his approval for
the change. The project management had discussion sessions with Engineers and grabbed their
ideas. The ideas from each and every level have been taken in to the consideration. E.g. Senior
3

Engineers, Engineers, Quality Assurance Engineers. Etc. They have communicated the change
across the organization. Provided training sessions on agile methodology and inspired the
employees to own the change. At the very beginning the change was introduced to one of their
internal project and reviewed the results. Through the reviews they have realized that the
application of agile methodology was successful. Then the change has been introduced to other
projects as well.
The main finding was: introduction of agile methodology to Simcentric Technologies was a
positive change and it can increase the productivity and quality of the products and improves the
ability for delivering the product on time. Employees adhered to the change within a short period
and the resistances were very less. Project teams are able to handle changing requirements
successfully.
Agile methodology is a good approach to produce high quality software and deliver on time. But
the employees should be trained properly on that methodology. Through the results of our
analysis we have realized that John Kotters eight step plan for change management is a
successful approach for driving a change. Simcentric Technologies has adopted that theory in a
very effective manner.

Chapter 2: Introduction and Objectives

Simcentric Technology is a medium level software development company. Mainly it caters fire
simulation software applications for their clients. The organization has a vision of Bring out the
real battlefield experience with fully controllable objects into our clients door step. To achieve
the vision the organization follows different various strategies. Recently they have made huge
change in their software development life cycle. From the beginning of the organization they had
followed the software development methodology called waterfall model. Day by day the
organizations product get complex with the new technologies and customer requirements. 5 -6
months back the software architectures in the Simcentric have figured out the waterfall model
is not suitable for their developments any more.
Simcentric wanted to choose a better software development methodology which can fulfill the
above major issues. At that time Agile software development methodology came into the title
and Simcentric moved to follow Agile. Agile development methodology is becoming the most
popular development model in the software development field. By introducing Agile
methodology in Simcentric, they are aiming to increase the productivity while catering high
performance and zero or less bugs software applications to their clients. This methodology is
very suitable for the products which have rapidly changing customer requirements.
In the Agile methodology the scrum can consider as the key point. Scrum is something like a
meeting and it consists with,

The Scrum Master

The person who maintain the process

The Product Owner

The person who is responsible
to take decisions regarding his product.

for

the

product.

He

has

the

authority

The Team
The People who are involve to design, develop, test & deploys the product.
5

The scrum master role is to,

Be a facilitator

Remove obstacles faced by the team

Assist the team in achieving the iteration goals

Coach the team on scrum principles

The scrum is time-boxed to 15 minutes and everybody answers the following three questions:

What have you done since yesterday?

What are you planning to do today?

Do you have any blockers to accomplishing the goal?

The Agile process begins with the creation of the product backlog. It is containing all the
features of the software (New features to the software or new requirement from the customer).
The scrum team involves in this process and then it is reviewed and prioritizes the order. The
software development is managed small iterations from one to four week. These iterations also
call as sprints. The size of the sprint may vary upon the product backlog. End of each sprint it
release new software version. This version may be consists with new features or fixed identified
bugs from previous sprint. This new software release review by the product owner.
The organization has faced some difficulties while they implement the change. As we know the
nature of employers resistant to change. So the organization had to come up with different
strategies to overcome these issues. Also they did not apply Agile methodology to entire
organization. Initially they tested with one development team and analyzed the outcome. Then
they applied the entire organization to Agile with some minor modifications.

The employees were trained on agile methodology. Initially there were only few employees who
were willing adopt the change. Selected scrum masters among them. Scrum masters were
provided special training on Agile. Scrum masters were asked to train others on agile
methodology more.
Also re arranged the physical structure of the working place. Earlier the software engineers and
the quality assurance engineers were in two different premises. So they could not communicate
properly. Communication was done through the emails or skype chat. With the new arrangement
helps them to work same premise. Then they could found a more effective communication link.
Since this change affected to entire organization life cycle, this can be considered as a huge
challenge to the organization. So Simcentric technology has used various strategies and
approaches to adapt to the change. Those strategies and approaches that Simcentric followed are
discuss in the later part of this report.
This organizational change has taken into consideration in this report because it included,

a clear change which affected to entire organization

how organization adopt this change

how they introduce the change in to the employers

what are the issues that arise with the change

how they overcome that issues

what sort of a success gain by implementing this change

The main objectives of this report are,

to analyze the organization context before and after the change

evaluate the change process

discover the strengths and weaknesses

evaluate the customer reaction towards the Agile methodology

analyze the overall success and failure with the change

Chapter 3: Methodology Statement

This section describes the methods used to collect, collate and analyze organizational data. This
mainly contains two sections. Those are data gathering and data analysis. Analysis of this project
is a combination of qualitative and qualitative analysis.

3.1 Data Gathering Methodologies:

We have used following methodologies to analysis the impact of the change process. Those are

Verbal Interviews
We have conduct verbal interviews on employees of the company covering all departments of
the work force such as software engineering, quality assurance and client service which focused
on how the change has impact on their work behavior, what are the advantages and
disadvantages they have faced due to the change and what is their overall view they have about
this change,
Also we have interviewed some of the Top level management, Department level management
and project managers to extract how this change helps them to meet their targets with parallel to
meet company objectives as well.
Questionnaires

A questioner created based on agile methodologies and practices which is expected answer by
operational level managers and Product masters and scrum masters of the team, based on their
level in a scrum team. We select teams 4 teams to answer these questions and questions are
forward to them after marking the correspondent section of the questioner. You can find the
relevant questioner is attached under appendixes.

Time analysis
We have analyzed the delivery timing of a software version with pre change implementation
time and post change implementation time .The corresponding timing took before the
implementation of the change are logged on JIRA (an issue tracking system) tickets by each and
every department .so we can do a comprehensive analysis using before and after timing in order

to complete a full delivery cycle of a software requirement. Here we assume the comparable
timings are for relatively similar tasks and task selection is done on based on its heaviness

3.2 Data analysis Methodologies:

After gathering data we used Microsoft Excel tool for the analysis. This analysis used graphs and
tables to reach the conclusion.

Chapter 4: Literature Review

An average of 70% software development projects fail because of:

Not meeting the timelines

Costs overrun

Customers have NOT got what they asked for

4.1 Reasons for software development project failures

Crucial aspect of the challenge is simply that what the software is required to do, i.e., its
functionality, is a moving target (Lee and Xia 2005,Nidumolu 1995). Such user requirements
changes are largely fueled by continuously evolving business needs (Cusumano and Yoffie 1999,
Hoorn et al. 2007,Iansiti and MacCormack 1997) and, in addition to being unpredictable, they
are occurring with increasing frequency and speed in an ever more competitive market
environment (Iansiti and MacCormack 1997).An inability to respond to changing user requirements has been implicated as one cause for major project failures, including outcomes such as
budget cost overruns, poor product quality, and project schedule overruns (Standish Group
2003). It is no wonder that requirements change is often viewed asa significant threat to software
development project success. (Maruping&Venkatesh et al., 2009)

4.2 Why Agile Methodology

The use of agile methodologies enables software developers to produce higher quality software
in a shorter period of time. Agile methodologies were developed to improve the development
process by removing barriers to accepting business requirement changes during the development
process. It is not necessary to freeze or lock in business requirements and design details while
developing software with an agile methodology.

Agile SDMs all share several qualities

including prototyping, iterative development, and minimal documentation.(Livermore, 2008)

10

Agile methodologies welcome change and unpredictability in software projects. Among the agile
methodologies, Extreme Programming (XP) is the one that has received the most attention.
Adherent of agile methodologies claim that they are more adaptive than predictive and more
people-oriented than process-oriented. Adaptive approaches said to be better when the
requirements are uncertain or volatile. If the requirement is not stable perhaps because of
business dynamics and rapidly evolving market pressure, it is difcult to develop stable design
and followed a planned process as being practiced in traditional methodologies. As a reaction to
these problems, a new group of methodologies known as agile methodologies evolved.
(Syed-Abdullah & Holcombe et al., 2006)

4.3 Agile Principals

Twelve values:

1.

Customer satisfaction by rapid delivery of useful software

2.

Welcome changing requirements, even late in development

3.

Working software is delivered frequently (weeks rather than months)

4.

Working software is the principal measure of progress

5.

Sustainable development, able to maintain a constant pace

6.

Close, daily cooperation between business people and developers

7.

Face-to-face conversation is the best form of communication (co-location)

8.

Projects are built around motivated individuals, who should be trusted

9.

Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design

10.

Simplicitythe art of maximizing the amount of work not doneis essential

11.

Self-organizing teams

12.

Regular adaptation to changing circumstances

(Agile software development, 2014)

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Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Working software over comprehensive documentation

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Responding to change over following a plan

(Creux, 2009)

4.4 Agile Development Methods

Scrum is an Agile development methods. It has been designed for management of software
development projects but can be usedas a general project management approach.
Roles

Scrum defines three main roles in a Scrum team:

the Scrum Master, it maintains the process

the Product Owner, usually the customer - it sets the directions of the software

theTeam, it designs, develops, tests & deploys the software. The team is self-managed.

Scrum initialization

The scrum process is initialized with the creation of the product backlog. The product backlog
can be seen as a wish list containing all the features the software should have. The Scrum team
(including the Scrum master & the Product owner) is involved in the creation of the product
backlog. The Product backlog is then reviewed and the features it contains are prioritized.
Once the product backlog is ready, the project is launched. The software development will be
managed via small iterations from one to four weeks. At the end of each iteration, a new release
of the software featuring new or updated features is deployed.
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Each iteration (also called sprint) starts with the creation of a sprint backlog. The sprint
backlog contains features coming from the product backlog which will be developed during the
iteration. Every day, a project status meeting called the Scrum occurs. The meeting is time-boxed
to 15 minutes and everybody answers the three questions:

What have you done since yesterday?

What are you planning to do today?

Do you have any problem preventing you from accomplishing your goal?

At the end of each iteration, a new release of the software is deployed. The Product owner
reviews this new release in order to validate it and to decide what the team has to developed or to
refactor next.
The Scrum method does not describe the way developers code & test the application within a
sprint allowing you to choose a method that suits your needs. (Creux, 2009)

4.5 Agile Meetings

Sprint planning meeting - In Scrum, every iteration begins with the sprint planning
meeting.

The daily standup - The heart of the Scrum process is the daily standup meeting, also
known as the daily Scrum.

Sprint Review and Retrospective meetings - In Scrum, when the sprint ends, its time for

the team to present its work to the Product Owner.

(MSDN, 2014)

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4.6 John Kotters eight step plan

Establishing a Sense of Urgency
Examining market and competitive realities
Identifying and discussing crises, potential crises, or major opportunities

Forming a Powerful Guiding Coalition

Assembling a group with enough power to lead the change effort
Encouraging the group to work together as a team

Creating a Vision
Creating a vision to help direct the change effort
Developing strategies for achieving that vision

Communicating the Vision

Using every vehicle possible to communicate the new vision and strategies
Teaching new behaviors by the example of the guiding coalition

Empowering Others to Act on the Vision

Getting rid of obstacles to change
Changing systems or structures that seriously undermine the vision
Encouraging risk taking and nontraditional ideas, activities, and actions

Planning for and Creating Short-Term Wins

Planning for visible performance improvements
Creating those improvements
Recognizing and rewarding employees involved in the improvements

Consolidating Improvements and Producing Still More Change

Using increased credibility to change systems, structures, and policies that dont fit the vision
Hiring, promoting, and developing employees who can implement the vision
Reinvigorating the process with new projects, themes, and change agents

Institutionalizing New Approaches

Articulating the connections between the new behaviors and corporate success
Developing the means to ensure leadership development and succession
Kotter, J. P. (1995).

14

Chapter 5: Organizational Context

Simcentric Technology is found in 2002 from Australia. The company became a multinational
organization with the company expansion to Bohemia and Sri Lanka in 2003.At the moment
around 150 employers are working including software project managers, software engineers and
software quality assurance engineers.
Simcentric provides software services to the simulation industry. The company is specialized in
the development of external programs which can connect and control elements inside the 3D
simulation platform. Basically they have applications which can create virtual battlefields and
create army soldiers, various types of guns, vehicles, civilians and terrorists. And allow users to
control the battle field and its objects.
Simcentric Technology produces various applications to their clients. These applications are
consumed by military officers, Air Force officers and Navy officers.
1. VBS2 Fires

VBS2 Fires is a comprehensive call-for-fire application which simulates fire support

from a wide range of platforms.

This application simulates exterior and terminal

ballistics to high level details, enabling gun-to-target of artillery orders. It allows

instructions basic skills, to decision-making from individual to battalion.

15

2. VBS2 Strike

VBS2 Strike is an air support training simulation application which designed to facilitate
the training of a forward air controller and uses its internal AI engine to determine
aircraft flight patterns and attack profile based on the user input.

3. VBS2 Fusion

VBS2 Fusion is a C++ application with a collection of libraries which helps to access and
modify the 3D simulation platform.

16

4. VBS2 Crowd Ambiance

VBS2 Crowd Ambiance is an application which can add breathes life (civilians) into the
3D simulation platform. So that civilians will interact and respond to gun fire scenarios.
Best part of this application is, it can control each and every civilians behavior according
to the user inputs.

5.1 Main consumers of the company

Simcentric Technology has few no of consumers. Mainly they are powerful militaries from
various countries including,
American Army
British Army
Bohemian Army
French Army

5.2 Organizational Culture and Structure

Simcentric top management consists with highly qualified PhD holders. Each and every
employer in Simcentric is holding at least a BSc degeree. So the organization has fully qualified
and capable employers. That would be the secret of their highly complicated AI based
innovations. They have set a vision of Bring out the real battlefield experience with fully
controllable objects into our clients door step. The Simcentric crew is very highly work
oriented and always tries to produce high quality products to their clients.
17

Simcentric technology is divided into specialized units which based on the different functions.
These units directly report to the company top management. Each specialized unit handles one
aspect of the product. Basically the employers work in groups according to how senior they are
and the given tasks that match their own skills. As an example software engineers are the only
staff in the entire software development department. Basically Simcentric has a functional
structure. The basic functional structure of the Simcentric can be illustrates as follows.

18

CEO
DrRanaweera

HR Manager

Software Development Manager

Operational Manager

Ms. Hunukumbura

Mr.Andradi

Mr.Rajapakshe

HR Assistants

Operational Staff

VBS Fires Product Owner

VBS Strike Product Owner

VBS Fusion Product Owner

Crowd Ambiance

Mr.Sudarshan

Mr.Nonis

Mr.Munasinghe

Mr.Perera

Project Managers

Project Managers

Project Managers

Project Managers

Software Engineers

Software Engineers

Software Engineers

Software Engineers

Quality Assurance
Engineers

Quality Assurance
Engineers

Quality Assurance
Engineers

Quality Assurance
Engineers

Release Engineers

Release Engineers

Release Engineers

Release Engineers

19

5.3 The organizational change of introducing Agile methodology

As the mentioned earlier in 6 months time back the software architectures and the top
management has figured out the issues in their product development life cycle. At that time the
organization followed waterfall model as their development life cycle. These issues have
arisen mainly with the company enlargement. They have figure out the following main issues in
waterfall model.

Poor model for long and ongoing projects

High amount of risk and uncertainty

No working software is produce until the late part of the life cycle.

No suitable for the applications which have rapid customer requirement changes

The waterfall model is well suit for the projects such as,

Requirements are well known

Requirements are not change in the middle of the project

Short term projects

Enough resources and technology available for freely

They have identified that above mentioned requirements do not meet with their products. So the
organization started to feel the need of a suitable product life cycle. At that time Simcentric has
chosen to introduce Agile methodology as their software development cycle.
Simcentric chose Agile because,

Customer satisfaction by frequent and continues software application delivery

Continuous attention to more and more better designs and technology

Can conduct proper communication by doing face to face conversation

Even late changes and requirements can acceptable

Ability to test frequently

Highly collaborative approach

Can have more iterations

20

Chapter 6: Issues to be addressed

As mentioned in the executive summary Simcentric Technology is software developing
company. The company runs multiple commercial projects. Such as VBS2 fires,VBS2
strike,VBS2 fusion, VBS2 crowd ambiance and etc. Each project is managed and run by one
project team. Each team contains about five to ten members. The company used water fall
methodology as the software development process. The waterfall model was first process model
to be introduced. In a waterfall model, each phase must be completed before the next phase can
begin and there is no overlapping in the phases. This is the earliest Software Development Life
Cycle approach that was used for software development.

Phases in Waterfall Process:

System Feasibility

Requirement Gathering
System Design

Implementation
System Testing

Maintenance

The company faced lots of problems due to this old model. Also the company didnt have proper
cubical structure to perform day today activities productively.

21

Following are the main issues faced by the employees before the change:

Software system requirements change rapidly. But in the waterfall model unable to make
any changes to middle or any phases after the process started. Therefore, it is very
difficult to incorporate requirement changes.

No working software until later phases of the model. Project progress not visible till the
end. Product owner cant see the product early and cant report issues early. The risk of
failure is high.

Testing only in the testing phase. Unable to do regular inspection as system develops.
Due to this systems contain more defects.

If any mistake happens should start from the beginning.

Low customer interaction and satisfaction

Communication barrier among the application developers and quality assurance

engineers.
o Both parties didnt understand the requirements in the same level. This introduces
more defects to the system.
o Productivity levels of the employees were very low.
o Less team work.

Company directors studied the above problem and proposed to use agile based development
methodologies.

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Phases in Scrum process:

In scrum process client doesnt have t wait till end of all the phases to get the product and can
actively participate to alter requirements during the product development. These are the main
advantages in scrum process. Also there are more testing phases available and client can see the
progress of the product development.

Also they restructured the cubical arrangement. Earlier quality assurance team and developers
are in two different floors. New change brought two teams in to the same floor.

This

solved

the communication barrier in between quality assurance members and developers.

23

Chapter 7: Report Key Findings

As mentioned under methodology statement, we have gathered information to determine the
impact of the change via questionnaires, verbal interviews and delivery time analysis. We also
used scrum documentations to highlights the key changes of scrum process and traditional
waterfall model software development.
First of all lets look at again the composition of the organization which related to the
formulation of scrum teams.

Group Name
Software Engineering
Quality Assurance
Project Managers
Product Owners

Number of Employees
90
25
5
5

Number of scrum teams based on products

VBS Fires
VBS Strikes
Fusion
Crowed Ambiance
Crowed Traffic

24

Change acceptance vs. Employees

Groups vs Scrum Acceptance

Project
Quality
Managers,Product owners,
Assuarance,
100%
100%
92%

120%
100%

Percentage

80%
60%

Software
engineering,
58%

40%
20%
0%
Group

According to above chart 58% of Software engineers are preferred to scrum development while
92% of quality assurance group members prefer to have it .the rest of two groups which consist
of 5 members each, 100 % convinced of the implementation of scrum.
As you can observe there is only 58 % of software engineers are preferring to it while 42% of the
group members are not convinced about the change yet .we were able to find out following
reasons with the help of statistical analysis and verbal interviews conduct why there are
considerable number of employees of Software engineering group did not like it.
1) Most of the software engineers have their own work pattern. They dont like to interrupt
it by external factors .With this scrum process sometimes actually their work pattern may
have to change. For example they may have to brief on what they have done and what
they are doing at the moment on every day in daily scrum meetings.

2) Most of times due to introduction of these scrum process, managers may tend to evaluate
engineers on number of items or amount of work they have accomplished per day instead
of focusing on the quality of the software. That will eventually end up demotivating
creative and innovative engineers
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Employee Percentage of Gropu

Years of Employement Vs Change

120.00%
100.00%
80.00%
60.00%

Employees accept the

change

40.00%
20.00%

Employees does not accept

the change

0.00%
less than 1 1-3 years 3-6 years
year

Over 6
years

Years

3) Also as per display in above chart we have found .people who have employed more than
1 year in the same organization are more reluctant to adopt this change than employees
who have less than 1 year of service in the same company. This can be explained by
understanding natural human behavior which resist for any change. But surprisingly
people who have more than 6 years of employment has 100 percent of commitment for
new change .its because those are the employees who initiate this change and convinced
on this change before it actually implemented to others ,we can identify them as change
champions.

Employee Productivity VS. Scrum

0%
13%
23%

strongly agree
Agree
Neither agree no disagree

29%

Disagree
35%

strongly disagree

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In relation to the employee productivity 58% of total employees believed it will improve their
overall productivity while 29% of employees have no idea about It .13 % believed it will not
improve their productivity and all employees belongs to that category are in the software
engineering group.
The majority of quality assurance engineers are think this will be improve their productivity
since they have been delivered sprints with small ,independent items so they dont want to do
tests like regression testing thoroughly with each and every release. Therefore they could focus
more on testing functional issues.
Also majority of employees who marked their option as neither agree nor disagree belongs to
software engineering group
Management consideration of employees' suggestions and
feedback on change process.
45
40
35
30

Software Engineering

25

Quality assuarance

20
15

Project management

10

Product owners

5
0
strongly
agree

Agree

No Idea

Disagree

strongly
disagree

Majority of employees have no idea whether management has accepted the feedbacks /
suggestion or indicated most of them have not given any feedback or suggestion to the
management as well. But those who provide feedback and suggestion are also not satisfied about
the response they got from management. We can clearly see management has neglected the
feedbacks from Software engineering group and Quality assurance Group which are representing
the largest two groups in the organization. But you can see management has accept the feedback
and suggestion from groups like Project managers and product owners because they are the
people who deal with this change in higher level and they are placed on above these SE and QA
27

group according to functional structure of the organization.so management has thought to

implement this change it is vital to accept the inputs from higher level employees than the lower
level employees.
Also you might noticed there are only 4 and 3 employees from software engineering and quality
assurance groups are agreed to that management has consider their inputs to the change process.
Those employees are very senior employees in the organization and holding Tech-Lead or
QA Lead positions of their groups.
We can see a clear elimination of feedbacks or suggestion from lower level employees, while
accepting the feedbacks and suggestions from higher level employees.
Time analysis

Total Deliver Time

35
30

Days

25
20

Watrefall Model

15

Scrum

10
5
0
Task 1

Task 2

Task 3

Task 4

Task vs. Total deliver time

The organization used an issue tracking system called JIRA to log issues and log timings of task.
We took few tasks which undertook by different scrum teams and we searched for similar tasks
which are accomplished before the scrum based development has started (Waterfall
model).compared those timing and plot a graph.
As you can see the total deliver time has slight variations of timing from waterfall model under
scrum development .this is due to because in waterfall model we dont welcome change requests
in the middle of the process since it would be very costly. But in the scrum, change requests are
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welcome since there will be multiple iterations for complete a sprint. Therefore you dont see
much of the delivery time differences between waterfall development and scrum, if too many
changes are welcome under scrum development even though the weight of the task is similar.
But you will find in the following chart the idle times of Software and QA engineers are
drastically down compared to waterfall model. The main reason was unlike waterfall model
Scrum is a continuous improvement and continuous review methodology .therefore you dont
have time to sit and enjoy or relax as before. You have to take inputs from previous release and
improve your next sprint release as per required. This may be one reason that 42% of software
engineers didnt accept the scrum, as per the Groups vs. Scrum Acceptance chart. Which may
associate with an established that software engineers doesnt like frequent changes to deal with

Man hours

Total Idle Time of Software Engineers

45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0

Watrefall Model

Scrum

Task 1

Task 2

Task 3

Task 4

Overall, majority of employees are accepted the scrum process is a good process for iterative
software development when requirements are dynamic and subjected to change frequently.
Majority of employees in software engineering group are in the same view even though 42% has
not still convinced about the change yet .but according to scrum specialist it took little bit of time
for engineers to actually switched into a common process of software development from their
personal practices or a from a process like waterfall model . Especially engineers who worked
more than 4 years are really difficult to convince for a change at the early stage while we can
easily adopt engineers who worked less than one year in the organization.
29

Also we note that product owners and project managers are fully convinced about the change.
Some of them actually involved initiating the change and they act as change champions who
work to convince others on change for success the change process.
From organizations perspective they got few advantages across this change. They can now fully
occupy their employees all the time by minimizing employees idle time and it allows them to
being more flexible for their customers to change their initial requirement without billing
significant additional cost to them. Also now entire software development process is more
transparent than previous with activities such as daily scrum meetings and marking progress of
activities on visual (physical) task board

30

Chapter 8: Discussion and Analysis

As mentioned in introduction the company moved their process model from classical waterfall
development model to agile based scrum model. As a software developing company this is a
major process change. We primarily used questionnaires, interviews and delivery time analysis
to collect information related to this change.

During the information gathering we found most of the employees were aware of change before
starting the implementation. According to John Kotters theory this is a major indicator for the
success of the change. Initially they had meetings to discuss about the need for change, what is in
it for the employees and what will happen if no change. Most of the employees were aware of
the change, but in Change acceptance vs. Employees graph shows only 58% of engineers have
accepted the change. The same group also thought this process is not going to improve their
productivity. This is because most of the software engineers were stable with the waterfall
model. Therefore they thought scrum process has additional tasks such as meetings which would
disturb their product implementation. Another reason for this is lack of knowledge of the scrum
process. The management reduced this percentage by conducting trainings related to scrum.

Most of employees own the need for change. The majority are the employees who worked more
than 6 years and who decide the change. Employees with less experience also accepted the
change easily. The management also collected suggestions from employees during the planning
session of the change and included some of the suggestions by the employees to change process.
This also increased the motivation level of the employees. But management consideration of
employees' suggestions and feedback on change process graph shows most of the software
engineers and quality assurance engineers didnt allow providing feedback. The management had

31

only valued the ideas of the top level. They have done a big mistake by ignoring the lower
working force. Therefore lower level didnt provide 100 percent support for the change.

Another point is to make a successful change need the power. Early stage of the change the
management scheduled a meeting with CEO and provided details related to the change. The
CEO understood the situation and gave the full support during the change. This gave enough
power to lead the change. This shows the foundation of the change process that the company
followed was very successful.
First the management organized trainings session and a workshop related to scrum model. They
selected an internal project team for the initial stage. They started with VBS fires project. The
company successfully phased out the larger change into smaller projects. Then they monitor the
progress of the process around two months. The management compared the defect density,
customer problems and customer satisfaction with the previous process values. Then gradually
the team introduced the scrum model to other projects as well. The change management team
also took feedback and improvements mainly from the scrum masters during the implementation
of the change. They didnt pay much attention to others. This is another mistake. According to
Kotters theory team should do consolidate improvements, reassess changes, and make necessary
adjustments in the new programmes.
The application developers and quality assurance engineers were in two floors. This cause lots of
communication problems. While introducing the new process the company changed the cubical
structure as well. This is the second part of the change. Similar to process change most of the
software engineers didnt agree for this as well. People like to change if they can see what they
can get from the change. If they cant get anything they will reluctant to change. Most of them
told now they can easily discuss about defects, requirement mismatches, estimations, release
32

issues etc easily. This improves the software quality. Now the productivity of the employees are
also high. The comparison of count of client problems and client satisfaction rates of past three
months shows the management has handled the change very successfully. In time analysis total
ideal time of software engineers graph shows how the scrum process has reduced the idling
time of the employees.

33

Chapter 9: Conclusion and Recommendation

We can identify some features of John Kotters eight step plan in the change management process of
Simcentric Technologies. At the beginning the senior management and the senior Engineers have
understood that the existing method should be changed. Then they have communicated that throughout
the organization. They have used discussion sessions and meetings for that. Most of the employees have
understood the necessity for the change. If the management introduced the change without
communicating about that the resistances will be higher than this level. Employees felt they also have a
key role to play within the organization. They have been empowered and motivated to own the change
before introducing. Simcentric is very successful at this point.
The senior management of the company had discussion sessions with the CEO of the company and got
his approval for the change. Because of that they had enough power to drive the change. Employees also
got to know that the CEO is also convinced about the change. When the key person is supporting for
some activity most of other employees gather around that. The employees ready to take risks because they
feel some stableness when the key person is with them.
The main problem that they had to address through the introduction of Agile methodology is handling the
rapid changes of the requirements and deliver a quality software on time. The organization has created a
proper plan for that and communicated it throughout the organization. All the employees knew about the
plan and they have worked to achieve the established goal. They have introduced the change to one of
their internal project and reviewed the results. Because the results were successful they have implemented
that to other projects as well
The organization provided necessary training sessions on Agile methodology. One major reason for the
resistances is techno fear. Simcentric addressed this problem by training employees on that before the
change. Up to this point we can see the features of John Kotters eight step plan. We can recommend the
above mentioned procedure in the change management process of any company.
As discussed in the Report key findings 100% of managers and senior employees accepted the change.
92% of Quality assurance engineers accepted the change. But 42% of software engineers didnt
convinced about it. At the beginning of the change process the management got the ideas from
employees. But through the questionnaires we have figured out that the employees feel that their ideas
were neglected by the management. They think that the management is forcing them to follow the process
although they can see holes in it. On the other hand the software engineers have their own methods of
developing software. So some of them feel the new method is not comfortable for them. And the

34

reduction of idle time was a problem for some of the engineers. It was a stress for them. They felt that
they have to work as robots. So we recommend to consider about stress management methods such as
flexible work hours, take short relaxation break, discuss the problems with managers. Etc.
The organization didnt motivate the employees in a satisfactory way. So the employees may begin to
think that they dont need to put their maximum effort to achieve organizational goals. At the beginning
part of the change management process the management got employee feedback. But at the latter part
they have forgotten to do that. Some employees felt that they became idle in the change process. So the
employees didnt empower to take the risks and come up with new ideas. So we recommend motivating
employees through celebrating short term wins get regular feedback and empower them by assigning
tasks and responsibilities according to their skill level.
The organization has reviewed the results during and after the change management process. They didnt
focus on continuous improvements. The company needs to review the process time to time and do
necessary adjustments. Through the interviews we have realized that the management didnt try to
convince the 42% of software engineers who were not comfortable with the change. 42% is not a
negligible amount. So the management should do necessary adjustments to reduce that number such as
providing more training sessions, have discussion sessions with them and figure out their problems
regarding the change process. Through the interviews, we have realized that the major problems are the
change of their normal software development pattern and the stress. As mentioned earlier the flexible
work hours and short relaxation breaks will address the problem.
As we have discussed in this report that the Simcentric technologies managed their change management
process successfully with less employee resistances. But the organizations should focus on the
recommendations that we have discussed in this chapter. It will make the change management process
much smoother than the existing level.

35

Chapter 10: Personal Reflective evaluation

Jayasekara K. R 149057M
I m a person who are coming from a very technical background with holding a B.Sc specialized
in software engineering. At the moment Im working as a Software Engineer at leading software
company in Sri Lanka. It is not a secret that the software development field consists with full of
deadlines. Most of the time software developers are in stress. Because of this reason personally I
do not want to continue my career as a software engineer in future. That is why I have chosen to
study MBA program and enhance my management knowledge and skills. The module
organizational behavior and management is the first management module I have ever learnt. The
learning materials of this module were really interest and help to improve my management
knowledge and skills.
At the same time this assignment has helped me to understand why employees resistant to
change and what the strategies employer would take to overcome. Since I m an employee at
selected organization and I also affected from the mentioned change. As an employee I could
remember how I behaved and reacted on this change. While working on this assignment I had to
research what sort of strategies that Simcentric management took place to establish the change.
On the other hand I realized what other strategies that management should have taken to
establish this change more effectively and efficiently. Since the incidents happened in my
organization I was responsible to provide organizational structure, organizational culture,
organizational brief profile, the main change which have taken place and the reasons for its
introduction to my other team mates. So I was involved to discuss about the organizational
context and introduction and objectives of the change process. If I was there in the change
management process I try to more close with the employers and collecting ideas about the
change. On the initial stage I plan to show some video documentaries that help them to realize
the importance of the change. And also ensure to show up how this change affect positively to
their career development. Likewise I try to show the advantages and benefits that they can gain
from the change.

36

Finally Im looking forward to apply the management knowledge and skills which I have gain
from this module, assignment and the experience which I have captured from my team mates in a
future appropriate management role.
Mullegamgoda M.M.M.P 149061U
I am from a technical background. Still, I have only one year and eight months experience in my
career life. Currently I am working as a software engineer. Being an engineer, I am leading a
small team of junior engineers at my workplace. If I mention about by strengths, I like to face
challenges, responsible, courageous, stable, committed and I am assertive in my office works
(May not in normal day to day activities). I like to help my team members at any time when they
are facing difficulties and I give regular feedbacks. While developing bug free software I always
focus on learning new technology aspects and I encourage my juniors to do that. I am very
rushed in doing things. If I mention about my weaknesses, I am introverted and I am not that
much of a good communicator. But I am sure I can overcome my weaknesses. I have selected
the MBA in IT at university of Moratuwa because I want to enhance my managerial skills.
In Organizational Behavior and management module we have got two assignments, learning
diary and this report. Learning diary helped me to apply the theories of the subject into my own
experiences and it leads me to live inside the subject. Assignment 02 helped me to understand
the change management, motivational theories and organizational structure. In this assignment
we have to analyze a change which has taken place in an organization. Through the analysis I
was able to understand how the theories can be applied to the real world scenarios. We can
memorize if the theories we have studied it well. But it is not effective if we dont know how to
apply them. This assignment addresses that problem. I have improved my negotiation skills,
teamwork skills, conceptual skills and emotional intelligence skills through this assignment.
According to our analysis we have realized that the company has followed John Kotters eight
step plan in change management. Most of the activities that the company has followed are
similar to that theory. Introducing a change is not an easy task. But using correct theories and
standard processes, we can achieve that goal. If I was there to drive the change I will also follow
the eight step plan. I will inspire the employees more than that Simcentric have done. E.g.
celebrating short term wins. The company considered about the ideas of the employees before
introducing the change. But they didnt get employee feedbacks after the change has been
37

applied. If they did that, they will be able to improve the procedures further more. If I was there
to drive the change I will focus on continuous improvements as well.
This module has helped me to improve the managerial qualities and at the same time it has
helped me to understand my weaknesses. As a personal development plan I will focus on
enhancing my communication skills, leadership skills and emotional intelligence skills. And I try
to apply the things which I have been studied through this module into practical activities. E.g.
Motivation theories, conflict management, stress management... Etc.
Kaluarachchi S. N. 149058R
I am working as a senior software engineer at Virtusa Pvt. Ltd. I have very good technical skills.
But technical skills are not enough to move up the career path. Therefore I am following this
MBA to improve my managerial skills. I am hard working, courageous and committed. But I am
not very good in communication. I believe I can improve my communication skill from this
MBA. Organizational Behavior and Management is the first subject of this MBA which provides
very valuable knowledge to understand human and organization behavior. This understandability
helps to manage and motivate employees easily. Not only employee management this subject
also taught stress level management, conflict resolution styles, personality tests, power politics,
etc. My main aim is to practically apply these theories learned and improve my knowledge
further.
This assignment helped me to understand how change process works and how it affects
employees. In addition it showed how to apply change management theories in practice. During
the analysis we found that the Simcentric Technology used Kotters eight steps plan to manage
their change. They successfully changed their development process from waterfall process to
scrum process without affecting smooth run of the operations. The main reasons for their success
are communication, employee motivation, planning and training. The analysis also showed some
drawbacks in their change management process. During the change implementation the
management forgot to consider employees feedback from the lower level. This is one mistake.
Employees feedback help to fine tune the system. In addition incorporating employees
feedback will motivate the employees.

38

If I were in the change management process head I would definitely follow Kotters eight steps
plan. I would first build a team with good knowledge of the change (change champions). Then
inform it to everyone in the organization and provide necessary training required for change
through change champions. After that, introduce the change gradually. Take feedback from
employees. Then alter the change process according to the feedback and continue. While change
is in progress I would introduce short term reward system for team members who gain success
from change. Another suggestion is scrum process is not suitable for all the development
projects. Scrum process is suitable for very dynamic projects with unclear requirements.
Therefore, Company should consider nature of the project when introducing this change to future
projects. Another important point is always follow best practices in industry and continuously try
to improve the change process.
Wellage C.A 149068X
I am working as a senior software engineer/database engineer in a software company whichs
core business is providing reports for stock broker clients in USA.I have nearly 6 years of
experience in IT industry as an engineer and worked in business domains like billing, financial
reporting.
I read my first degree in Management and Information Technology but since then I selected to go
with technical background, for last 6 years I had no opportunity of practicing the management
related disciplines and eventually it ended up without adding me much value for my career .But
then later I decided to shift my career into more of a part time business, started with one of my
friend and I had forced to execute management related tasks such as planning ,organizing
,costing ,billing and work with subordinates and clients. Then I realized the need of learning
management again. Therefor I decided to study for MBA and gain related experience.
Throughout this module I have learnt the relation of human behavior and the organizational
behavior which of course help me to identify the actual issues we are facing now in my current
work place, in a broader manner. I actually pointed out most of it in my learning diary
assignment and I actually try to convey those issues plus solutions from my perspective in near
future. For example the changed mentioned in this assignment (scrum) had started in our

39

organization too over a year ago, but eventually failed due to lack of support from management
and lack of awareness for need of the change by the majority of management team.
If I was given authority to implement the particular change I will first convinced the
management about the need of the change and I will build a team from members who extended
their support to do this change and I will give them power of delegation to influence rest of the
members of the organization for actual implementation of it, while I am monitoring their moves
extensively. Also I will propose a reward scheme for employees on monthly basis, for those who
have shown the most successful adoption to the change by each and every month.
Finally I would like to extend my sincere thanks to our team members for their commitment and
sharing their knowledge among each other for the success of this assignment.

40

References
Agile Software Development. (2014, April 29). In Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development

A. Livermore, J. (2008). Factors that Significantly Impact the Implementation of an Agile

Software Development Methodology.
Creux, P. (2009). Agile Development in a Nutshell.[Blog] eggsonbread.com. Available at:
http://eggsonbread.com/2009/07/10/agile-development-in-a-nutshell/ [Accessed 5 Apr.
2014].
Kotter, J. (1995). Leading change: Why transformation efforts fail. Harvard business review,
73(2), pp.59--67.
M. Maruping, L. and Venkatesh, V. (2009). A Control Theory Perspective on Agile Methodology
Use and Changing User Requirements, [online] 20. Available at:
http://vvenkatesh.com/Downloads/Papers/fulltext/pdf/Maruping_Venkatesh_Agarwal_ISR_
2009.pdf [Accessed 11 Mar. 2014].
Msdn.microsoft.com, (2014).Meetings (Agile). [online] Available at:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd997582%28v=vs.100%29.aspx [Accessed 11
Apr. 2014].
Syed-abdullah, S., Holcombe, M. and Gheorge, M. (2006).The Impact of an Agile Methodology
on the Well Being of Development Teams. [online] Available at:
http://www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/~wmlh/SharifahEMSE8.pdf [Accessed 11 Mar. 2014].

41

Chapter 12:Appendix
12.1 Questionnaire
Questioner for all employees
1) Your group
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2) Your designation
Associate Software Engineer
Software engineer
Senior Software Engineer
Tech lead
Associate QA engineer
QA engineer
Senior QA engineer
QA Lead
Project Manager
Product Owner
3) Have you Practiced Scrum before?
Yes No
4) If not did you receive a proper training about scrum process and features before you
start??
Yes No
5) Are you comfortable with the Scrum process than the previous process??
Yes No
6) If not can you briefly mentioned three reasons why you are not comfortable with it
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------7) How long have you been with the organization?
Less than 1year
1-5 years
5-10
More than 10
8) As per your point of view what is the level of input from your team members to deliver a
sprint successfully.
42

 Poor
Moderate
Good
Very good
9) Briefly explain below.
a. What is the change?
--------------------------------------------------------------------b. Why is the change being made?
--------------------------------------------------------------------c. How is the change going to affect me?
---------------------------------------------------------------------10) To what extent are you affected by this change?
High

Average
Low
11) Any weaknesses you saw in the change process?
12) New process will be a benefit for the company

strongly agree
Agree
Neither agree not disagree
Disagree
strongly disagree
13) I believe new process will improve my productivity and effectiveness in work
strongly agree
Agree
Neither agree not disagree
Disagree
strongly disagree

Management Support
14) The management is supportive and motivated employees towards the change?
43

Strongly agree
Agree
Neither agree not disagree
Disagree
Strongly disagree
15) Management always keeps me informed about matters that affect me.

Strongly agree
Agree
Neither agree not disagree
Disagree
Strongly disagree
16) The Management considered employees' suggestions and feedback during the change process.

Strongly agree
Agree
Neither agree not disagree
Disagree
Strongly disagree
17) Management is personally committed to the new process

Strongly agree
Agree
Neither agree not disagree
Disagree
Strongly disagree
The following Questioner is expected to fill by Product owners, Scrum Masters and Project
Managers only.
Increment
1.) Does the increment (the release produce at the end of each sprint) adhere to the defined
quality standards?
2.) Does the increment works when it is integrated with the existing features, i.e. it should
not break the existing functionality.
3.) After every sprint does the increment presented to the client? If not how often the
increment is presented to the client?
4.) Does client feedback used for improving future upcoming increments?
Events

44

1.)
2.)
3.)
4.)
5.)
6.)
7.)
8.)
9.)

How often you have the sprint retrospective?

Do all team members participate in the retrospective?
How often do you cancel the current sprint due to critical changes?
How often do you cancel the current sprint due to critical bugs?
How often the team members are deviated from the current sprint?
Does the scrum meeting time boxed to 15 minutes?
Does the scrum meeting starts at the same time every day?
Do you take remaining work to the next sprint?
How often you take the remaining work to the next sprint?

Information Radiators
1.)
2.)
3.)
4.)
5.)
6.)
7.)

Do the team members update the tasks daily?

Do you use physical boards and are they updated parallel to the electronic boards?
Do the success sliders help the top management to identify the priorities?
Does scrum process has impact on other departments?
If so does it forces change HR policies?
Does scrum process has an impact to sales and marketing?
If so does to forces the sales and marketing to plan the campaigns accordingly?

Roles
1.)
2.)
3.)
4.)

Does scrum implementation forces the roles to be changed?

Do you rotate the scrum master among team members?
If so how often do you change the scrum master role?
Do you have other roles such as QA Lead, QA Engineer, Tech Lead, Developer, etc.
within the scrum team?
5.) Or else do they work as a team towards the sprint goal as a team irrespective of the role
their playing.
6.) Who has the permission to enter Backlog items to Product Backlog? (Product
Owner/Scrum Master/ Scrum team / Client / Client Support / Anyone)
7.) How often the releases are planned by the product owner? (Monthly/ Quarterly / Every
Six Months / Yearly)
Adapting
1.) When adopting scrum initially was the entire company aware of the new process?
2.) If so does everyone agreed that current process was not working and they needed a new
process?
3.) Does every one agree the new process works as expected?
4.) Or do they agree for further improvements and training on the new process?
5.) Did you start with one scrum team and expand it to the other teams?
6.) Or else did you implement it for the whole company?
7.) Was there any resistance?

45