Supporting Agility at Scale Through an Organization-wide Software Engineering Community of Practice: Insights from a Large Software Development Organization

Large, established organizations often struggle with being agile due to structural and cultural barriers. Communities of Practice (CoPs) can support achieving this goal by fostering exchange, collaboration, and cross-organizational alignment. However, limited research exists on the implementation and role of CoPs in very large, established enterprises. Likewise, despite the challenges a large CoP scope can yield, research on large-scale communities is limited. This paper addresses these gaps through a single-case study of a large Software Engineering CoP within a global software company aiming for agility. Our findings show that the CoP plays a manifold role in supporting agility at scale, particularly through its ecosystem approach based on a network of sub-CoPs and related initiatives. However, the CoP's large size and the company's complexity create challenges, such as organizational difficulties. With our study, we contribute to a better understanding of how large-scale CoPs can facilitate agility in complex enterprise environments.