An Investigation of the Decision-Making Process in Agile Teams

Abstract

This paper firstly explores the decision-making process in agile teams using scrum practices and secondly identifies factors that influence the decision-making process during the Sprint Planning and Daily Scrum Meetings. We conducted 34 semi-structuredinterviews and 18 observations across four agile teams. Our findings show that a rational decision-making process is sometimes followed in the Sprint Planning and Daily Scrum Meetings and that three factors can influence the rational decisionmaking process: sprint duration, experience and resource availability. Additionally, decisions are not always made in a collaborative manner by team members. This research contributes to the decisionmaking literature and project management literature by highlighting difficulties pertinent to decision-making in agile teams.

Determinants for Successful Agile Collaboration between UX Designers and Software Developers in a Complex Organisation

“…The designers and developers confirmed that decision-making processes are a challenge in both the Online Survey and the Pairing Study, reflecting reports elsewhere (e.g., Drury-Grogan & O'Dwyer, 2013). The online survey respondents perceived senior stakeholders' hierarchical decision-making process as a barrier to successful ASD.…”

“…The pairing study found that success between designers and developers comes by breaking down tasks to make "small" joint decisions and iterations together in combination with using data and audience research to inform bigger, more strategic decisions by team stakeholders. The importance of the decision-making processes reflects reports elsewhere (e.g., Drury-Grogan & O'Dwyer, 2013) and show that decision-making is an on-going challenge that requires support, both at a managerial and a localised level in an organisational setting. There appears to be a strong desire from the designers and developers to improve this, providing more ownership to teams and reducing the risk-aversive culture found in the organisation.…”

“…This is often achieved through paired programming in short iterative cycles, with contingent user feedback. Importantly, it requires a high degree of collaboration and shared decision-making (Drury-Grogan, O'Dwyer, 2013). Agile (Beck et al, 2001) emerged because of the need for a lightweight set of software development methods to address drawbacks of 'heavyweight' document-driven methodologies-such as so called 'waterfall' development frameworks (Szalvay, 2004).…”

Collaboration Constraints for Designers and Developers in an Agile Environment

“…In addition, ASD is perceived as too much hampered by top-down decision-making and a persisting "sign off" tradition in the organisation. This extends findings from previous research (Drury-Grogan & O'Dwyer, 2013;Moe, Aurum & Dybå, 2012) on how decision-making processes affect agile development processes.…”

“…Interestingly, the widely reported moderator of differences in experience with ASD (e.g., Drury-Grogan & O'Dwyer, 2013;Serrador & Pinto, 2015; see also Vijayasarathy & Turk 2012), does not seem to have any impact on our measures here: both the length of work as well the explicitly elicited (self-assessed) knowledge of ASD had no significant effect on moderating satisfaction with the development process.…”