Understanding Self-Organizing Teams in Agile Software Development

Moe, Nils Brede; Dingsøyr, Torgeir; Dybå, Tore

doi:10.1109/aswec.2008.4483195

Cited by 97 publications

(116 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…New challenges are emerging and the focus of existing challenges is shifting, reflecting the current state of practice. Some challenging activities, for example setting up a Scrum team, have been the subject of research and are now better understood [2,3]. There is a growing body of research literature, experience reports, books and guidelines providing suggestions for those seeking help.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The challenges that challenge: Engaging with agile practitioners’ concerns

Gregory

Barroca

Sharp

et al. 2016

Information and Software Technology

105

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Context: There continues to be concern that research is not addressing the challenges that practice faces. For the benefit of academia and industry, researchers need to be aware of practitioners' challenges and their context so that relevant and applicable research is undertaken.Objective: This paper investigates two research questions: what challenges do agile practitioners face?and, how do practitioner challenges manifest themselves in an organisational setting? It aims to map the practitioner challenge landscape, explore challenge characteristics, compare findings with previous literature and identify implications for research that is relevant to practice.Method: A combination of methods was used: elicitation of practitioner challenges collected using a Challenge Wall at a series of practitioner events; organisational Case Study using interviews, document analysis and observation; and online Survey. Findings were then compared to previous publications. Results:Challenges collected from the Challenge Wall were grouped under 27 subthemes and seven themes: Claims and Limitations, Organisation, Sustainability, Culture, Teams, Scale, and Value.Investigating one challenge in the Case Study uncovered a set of new challenges, which were interrelated. Over 50% of survey respondents experienced challenges highlighted in the Case Study. Conclusion:The landscape of agile practitioner challenges is complex and intertwined. Some challenges, such as doing agile in a non-agile environment, are multi-dimensional, affect many aspects of practice, and may be experienced simultaneously as business, organisational, social and adaptation problems. Some challenges, such as understanding cultural change or measuring agile value, persist and are hard to address, while others, such as adoption, change focus over time. Some challenges, such as governance and contracts, are under-researched, while others, such as business and IT transformation, have been researched but findings have not had the expected impact. Researchers wishing to address practitioner challenges need to treat them in context rather than in isolation and improve knowledge transfer.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The challenges that challenge: Engaging with agile practitioners’ concerns

Gregory

Barroca

Sharp

et al. 2016

Information and Software Technology

105

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The behaviors demonstrated by Jazz core developers may not be default behaviors, however. Such high performing members often need to possess intrinsic motivation and keen willingness to self-organize [55]. A facilitating organization and work structure are also likely to be prerequisites for encouraging high performers to work across roles as the need arises.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The true role of active communicators

Licorish

MacDonell

2013

Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering

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Context: Interest in software engineering (SE) methodologies and tools has been complemented in recent years by research efforts oriented towards understanding the human processes involved in software development. This shift has been imperative given reports of inadequately performing teams and the consequent growing emphasis on individuals and team relations in contemporary SE methods. Objective: While software repositories have frequently been studied with a view to explaining such human processes, research has tended to use primarily quantitative analysis approaches. There is concern, however, that such approaches can provide only a partial picture of the software process. Given the way human behavior is nuanced within psychological and social contexts, it has been asserted that a full understanding may only be achieved through deeper contextual enquiries. Method: We have followed such an approach and have applied data mining, SNA, psycholinguistic analysis and directed content analysis (CA) to study the way core developers at IBM Rational Jazz contribute their social and intellectual capital, and have compared the attitudes, interactions and activities of these members to those of their less active counterparts. Results: Among our results, we uncovered that Jazz's core developers worked across multiple roles, and were crucial to their teams' organizational, intrapersonal and inter-personal processes. Additionally, although these individuals were highly task-and achievement-focused, they were also largely responsible for maintaining positive team atmosphere. Further, we uncovered that, as a group, Jazz developers spent a large amount of time providing context awareness in support of their colleagues. Conclusion: Our results suggest that highperforming distributed agile teams rely on both individual and collective efforts, as well as organizational environments that promote informal and organic work structures.

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“…A limited number of studies have assessed task allocation mechanisms practiced by Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) development teams; however, they did not cover commercial projects [7]. Overall, task allocation in agile software teams, which are meant to be self-organizing [9,12], has not be studied.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring Workflow Mechanisms and Task Allocation Strategies in Agile Software Teams

Masood

Hoda

Blincoe

2017

Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing

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Abstract. Task allocation is considered an important activity in software project management. However, the process of allocating tasks in agile software development teams has not received much attention in empirical research. Through a pilot study involving mixed open-ended and closed-ended interviews questions with 11 agile software practitioners working within a software development organization in India, we explain the process of task allocation as including three different mechanisms of workflow across teams: team-independent, teamdependent, and hybrid workflow; and five types of task allocation strategies: manager-driven, team-driven, individual-driven, manager-assisted and teamassisted. Knowing these workflow mechanisms and task allocation strategies will help software teams and project managers make more effective decisions around workflow and task allocation.

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Understanding Self-Organizing Teams in Agile Software Development

Cited by 97 publications

References 25 publications

The challenges that challenge: Engaging with agile practitioners’ concerns

The challenges that challenge: Engaging with agile practitioners’ concerns

The true role of active communicators

Exploring Workflow Mechanisms and Task Allocation Strategies in Agile Software Teams

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