Dependencies in Scaled Agile Environments

Description Large-scale agile software development is frequently affected by organizational and technical dependencies that reduce delivery performance, increase coordination effort, and limit organizational agility. While frameworks such as SAFe provide mechanisms for coordinating teams, they offer limited guidance for systematically identifying the underlying causes of dependencies and selecting appropriate improvement measures. This technical report presents a structured methodology for analyzing dependency drivers in scaled agile environments. It examines dependencies from both organizational and technical perspectives, including team topology, software architecture, communication structures, and business domain organization. Building on this analysis, the report proposes a catalogue of short-term measures for improving collaboration and dependency management as well as long-term architectural and organizational strategies for reducing dependencies. The methodology emphasizes the relationship between organizational design and software architecture, drawing on concepts such as Conway's Law, cross-functional and end-to-end teams, business-oriented team structures, microservice architectures, API contracts, dependency mapping, and cross-system testing. The report is intended for practitioners, architects, engineering managers, business analysts, and transformation leaders involved in agile transformations and large-scale software development. Rather than introducing a new agile framework, it complements existing approaches by providing a practical method for identifying dependency drivers and selecting targeted improvement actions.