| Course | MGT 647 Project Management Integration Framework |
|---|---|
| Module | Module 6 |
| Paper type | MBA Agile scaling plan |
| Length | About 1,008 words, 6 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Aspen University |
| Program | Master of Business Administration |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for MGT 647 Module 6
From Three Teams to Nine Without a Bureaucracy: Scaling Agile at Lakeshore Mutual
Student Name
Master of Business Administration, Aspen University
MGT 647: Project Management Integration Framework
Instructor Name
Month Day, Year
From Three Teams to Nine Without a Bureaucracy: Scaling Agile at Lakeshore Mutual
Lakeshore Mutual's first Agile teams have shown results: the claims app reached half of new claims within a year, the support team's average wait fell from five weeks to under three, and the policy features team released its first agent tools. The chief information officer now wants Agile across claims, policy and billing, growing from three teams to nine over eighteen months. This paper plans how to scale without recreating the bureaucracy Agile was meant to escape.
Why Scaling Is Hard
Scaling is not simply repeating what worked for one team nine times. Teams that share systems, customers and budgets need ways to align, and those ways can grow until they consume the time the teams were meant to save.
Dikert et al. (2016) systematically reviewed 52 publications reporting large-scale Agile transformations, mostly industrial experience reports. They grouped the challenges into categories, including change resistance, lack of investment, difficulty implementing Agile methods at scale, coordination challenges in a multi-team environment, different approaches emerging in a multi-team environment, hierarchical management and organizational boundaries, requirements engineering challenges, quality assurance challenges and integrating non-development functions. The success factors they identified were led by management support, commitment to change, leadership, choosing and customizing the Agile model, piloting, training and coaching, engaging people and communication.
For Lakeshore, three challenges stand out: coordinating nine teams that share the claims and policy systems, integrating finance, which funds projects annually, and compliance, which reviews changes to customer communications, and avoiding a situation where each new team invents its own version of Agile.
Scale Step by Step
Rigby et al. (2016) wrote for executives about extending Agile beyond software development. They argued that leaders should learn how Agile actually works, understand where it fits, starting with innovation work where problems are complex and customer preferences are likely to change, and scale gradually. They warned against launching Agile everywhere at once and suggested building a taxonomy of opportunities and sequencing them, while ensuring that the functions supporting Agile teams, such as finance and human resources, adapt as well.
Organizing Around Customer Journeys
The current teams are organized around systems. Adding six more on that basis would create teams that each own part of what a customer experiences and depend on one another for every change. Instead, Lakeshore will organize around three customer journeys: filing and settling a claim, buying and changing a policy, and paying premiums and receiving payments. Each journey gets three teams, a product manager and a share of the platform engineers. Dependencies remain, but most fall inside a journey rather than across many teams.
Coordination That Adapts
Dingsøyr et al. (2018) studied a very large development program in Norway with many teams and examined how it coordinated work. The program used a range of mechanisms, including meetings among team leaders, a technical forum, shared demonstrations and informal communication, and it changed these arrangements over time as problems surfaced. The researchers argued that large-scale Agile requires continual adaptation of methods rather than adoption of a fixed framework.
| Mechanism | Purpose | When added |
|---|---|---|
| Quarterly planning day for all teams in a journey | Align goals and expose dependencies | Phase 1 |
| Product owner council, every two weeks | Settle priorities across teams | Phase 1 |
| Shared sprint review per journey | Show integrated work to stakeholders | Phase 1 |
| Communities of practice for testing, design and data | Spread skills and standards | Phase 2 |
| Architecture forum | Agree on shared technical patterns | Phase 2, if needed |
| Cross-journey dependency board | Track and resolve blocking dependencies | Only if dependencies grow |
Roles at Scale
Each journey gets a product manager who sets direction for its three teams and chairs its quarterly planning day, while each team keeps its own product owner for day-to-day backlog decisions. A small platform group of engineers maintains the shared claims and policy systems and treats the journey teams as its customers. The chief information officer's leadership team becomes a portfolio group that decides how many teams each journey gets, based on results, rather than approving individual projects.
One Lakeshore Way, Lightly Defined
Dikert and colleagues noted that different approaches tend to emerge when many teams adopt Agile, which makes coordination harder. Lakeshore will set a short common baseline: two-week sprints aligned within each journey, a shared definition of done covering security checks and customer data, and the same tool for backlogs. Beyond that, teams choose their own practices, and communities of practice spread what works.
Measuring the Scaled System
Three measures will show whether scaling helps: the time from an idea's approval to its release within each journey, customer outcomes such as claim cycle time and policy change errors, and a twice-yearly team health survey. If the time to release rises as teams are added, coordination is growing faster than value, and the portfolio group should pause expansion and remove a mechanism before adding another team.
Finance and Compliance
Finance will fund each journey as a stable team with a budget reviewed quarterly against results, instead of approving projects annually. Compliance will place a reviewer in each journey's sprint review and agree on standard wording that teams can use without separate review.
Phases
Phase 1, months one to six, forms the claims journey's three teams and its coordination. Phase 2, months seven to twelve, forms the policy journey. Phase 3 forms billing. Each phase begins only when the previous journey meets its sprint goals at least three times in four. People for new teams come partly from existing ones, so each new journey starts with experienced members, and partly from the business, since claims and underwriting specialists will sit on teams as full members rather than as occasional reviewers. Training for new teams is led by Lakeshore's own Scrum Masters, with outside coaches used for the first journey only.
Conclusion
Dikert, Paasivaara and Lassenius identify what to expect, Rigby, Sutherland and Takeuchi justify growing step by step, and Dingsøyr and colleagues support adapting coordination as the organization learns. Organizing around customer journeys keeps the growth from turning into a new bureaucracy.
References
Dikert, K., Paasivaara, M., & Lassenius, C. (2016). Challenges and success factors for large-scale agile transformations: A systematic literature review. Journal of Systems and Software, 119, 87-108. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2016.06.013
Dingsøyr, T., Moe, N. B., Fægri, T. E., & Seim, E. A. (2018). Exploring software development at the very large-scale: A revelatory case study and research agenda for agile method adaptation. Empirical Software Engineering, 23(1), 490-520. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-017-9524-2
Rigby, D. K., Sutherland, J., & Takeuchi, H. (2016). Embracing agile. Harvard Business Review, 94(5), 40-50.
MGT 647 Module 6 instructions, in plain terms
Module 6 of Aspen's MGT 647 covers scaling Agile across an organization, and students are commonly asked to plan how Agile could grow beyond a few teams. Your Module 6 instructions in the classroom decide the scope; this example continues the composite insurer. Explain why scaling is difficult. Decide how teams should be organized. Choose mechanisms to coordinate multiple teams. Address functions outside technology, such as finance and compliance. Phase the growth. Name the leadership changes required, and say how the company will know whether scaling helps. Cite research in APA 7 form.
Inside the MGT 647 Module 6 example
Lakeshore has a Scrum team on the claims app, a Kanban support team and a new team on the policy migration's features, and plans six more. Dikert, Paasivaara and Lassenius's Journal of Systems and Software review analyzed 52 publications on large-scale transformations and grouped challenges and success factors into categories. Rigby, Sutherland and Takeuchi's Harvard Business Review article urged leaders to understand how Agile works, scale it gradually and apply it where it fits. Dingsøyr and colleagues' Empirical Software Engineering article described a program of many teams that introduced and changed coordination arrangements over time. The plan organizes teams around three customer journeys, filing a claim, buying and changing a policy, and paying and getting paid, and coordinates them through a shared quarterly planning day, a product owner council and communities of practice, adding a mechanism only when a problem shows it is needed.
MGT 647 Module 6 rubric: what earns full marks
Scaling papers earn their marks by showing awareness of what goes wrong and by choosing coordination deliberately. This example uses Dikert, Paasivaara and Lassenius to identify likely challenges, Rigby, Sutherland and Takeuchi to justify gradual growth and Dingsøyr and colleagues to support adapting coordination over time. Organizing around customer journeys addresses dependencies, the coordination table is specific, and the plan addresses finance and compliance. Each phase has a condition for moving on. Defined roles for journey product managers and a platform group, a light common baseline and measures of whether scaling helps or hurts show a plan that could be run, not only described.
MGT 647 Module 6 help: mistakes that cost marks
Scaling papers often name a framework and copy its structure without asking whether the organization needs it. Start from the problems that coordination must solve. Another weakness is organizing teams around systems or departments, which multiplies dependencies; organize around customer outcomes where possible. Address the parts of the company that are not Agile, such as budgeting and compliance. Phase the growth and set conditions for each step. Finally, explain what leaders must change, since scaling fails most often for reasons outside the teams. Set measures that would reveal coordination overload, such as a rising time from idea to release.
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MGT 647 Module 6 questions, answered
What does MGT 647 Module 6 usually ask for?
Aspen's MGT 647 covers scaling Agile in this module, so an MBA paper planning how Agile grows beyond a few teams is common. First read your classroom prompt.
Why is scaling Agile hard?
Dikert, Paasivaara and Lassenius found recurring challenges including resistance to change, coordinating many teams, integrating with non-Agile functions and misunderstanding Agile concepts.
Should a company scale Agile all at once?
Rigby, Sutherland and Takeuchi advised scaling step by step, starting where conditions fit and learning before expanding.
Where can I find a free MGT 647 Module 6 sample paper?
The example above plans how an insurer can grow from three Agile teams to nine organized around customer journeys.
How should many Agile teams coordinate?
Dingsøyr and colleagues found that a large program adapted its coordination mechanisms over time, adding and changing them as problems appeared.