Abstract: Austerity and financial constraints have been threatening the public sector in the UK for a number of years. Foreseeing the threat of continued budget cuts, and addressing the situation many local councils face, requires internal transformations that help achieve financial stability without losing the key public service focus of their existence. Agile transformations have been undertaken by organisations wanting to learn from agile and bringing agile principles into the wider organisation. This paper describes and analyses an ongoing behaviour-led transformation in a district council in the UK. It presents the results of the analysis of a series of interviews with internal stakeholders at the council, of observations of different meetings among senior and middle management in the period of January to May 2018. The paper explores the successes and the challenges encountered at the end of the transformation process and reflects on the balancing acts that need to be considered to address the challenges. We also suggest that behaviours on their own cannot guarantee a sustained agile culture. For large-scale agile software development transformations, we highlight the importance of considering organization-wide factors to sustain change in the long term.
Learning Outcomes: