Trends and Updated Research Agenda for Autonomous Agile Teams: A Summary of the Second International Workshop at XP2019

Abstract

To succeed in complex environments and handle the innovation, development and support, organizations have to find ways to support and regulate the autonomy of teams according to the environmental demands and limitations. Furthermore, there is no one-size-fits-all autonomy approach. The process of forming and implementing autonomous teams, as well as the effective functioning of such teams, is not yet adequately addressed and understood in the context of complex knowledge-intensive organizations. The second international workshop on autonomous teams investigated barriers for team autonomy: "What are the real-world problems to be solved for autonomous teams?" and "What concepts from the literature can be used to solve the problems?"

Multiple Roles of Middle Managers in Agile Project Governance: An Activity Theory Perspective

“…The MMs are expected to work alongside agile teams and play their role to ensure delivery of ASD projects, hence they are part of the project governance structure therein. However, there is evidence that the role of MMs in ASD projects is not clearly defined and not fully understood [3,6,12]. Agile projects are considered lightweight, self-organising, and flexible, therefore practitioners question how 'management' and 'governance' fit in.…”

Dependencies of Agile Teams – An Analysis of the Scaled Agile Framework

“…Challenges mentioned at the workshop A-Teams in 2019 [ 5 ] were that teams have “too many dependencies to others”, a “lack of organizational support”, and “part-time resources”, which are all “interface problems” [ 2 ]. In the 2018 A-teams workshop [ 6 ], concerns like “coordination”, “organizational context supporting autonomy”, or “leadership” also address interface problems and were rated as having the highest priority.…”

Onboarding: How Newcomers Integrate into an Agile Project Team

“…There is a dearth of research into onboarding into colocated agile software development project teams with a single paper indicating that certain agile practices contribute to onboarding [4]. Onboarding was raised as a concern by practitioners in an international research-practitioner workshop in 2019 [10]. Practitioners are also concerned with sustaining successful agile project teams [11], and integrating newcomers is a factor in achieving long-term sustainability.…”