Coordination in the large: a research design

The public sector is facing a massive digitalization process in order to provide faster and more automated services to the public. Several new projects in this sector are developing software using agile methodologies. There is, however, a lack of empirical research on how these methods are used in practice, how they are adapted to these complex and large settings, and how the projects achieves good coordination. In this paper we outline our initial research proposal to study a large-scale agile development program in the public sector. Our primary focus is to make sure the research is grounded in the reality of the practitioners and so we seek to follow an engaged scholarship model in order to make our research relevant as well as rigorous.