An agile bureaucracy? Lessons from an ethnographic study of agile teams in the Norwegian public sector

Abstract

As governments increasingly try to develop their own technological solutions to handle growing demands, a key response has been to move away from traditional “waterfall” methods and towards modern “agile” principles for innovation. While agile principles are advocated as crucial to handling the complexity of the public sector, they have also been found to be difficult to implement in practice. To advance our understanding of these difficulties, this article aims to unpack the challenges facing software development teams when trying to use agile methods in the public sector. The article draws on ethnographic data from a study of software development teams in the Norwegian Labor and Welfare administration (NAV). By analyzing these data through the theoretical lens of institutional theory – particularly emphasizing institutional complexity due to conflicting institutional logics – the article uncovers three critical tensions facing the development teams: between bottom-up methods vs. top-down delegation, flexibility vs. pre-planned mandates, and “fast” teams vs. a “slow” context. These tensions indicate a “decoupling” between proclaimed agility and practiced methodologies, with the practical reality of the teams' working environment being characterized as a mixture of elements from both waterfall and agile methods. By uncovering these tensions and contradictions, the article explores the institutional complexity of public sector innovation, in which workers struggle to navigate an institutional context characterized by conflicting demands.