An Investigation of Team Effectiveness in Agile Software Development

Abstract

Abstract Agile teamwork has been widely used and accepted in today's industry of software development. The methods in agile teamwork claim to improve performance and predictability, and has during the past years become the target for an emerging area of research. The majority of the existing studies concerning agile teamwork mainly focus around eXtreme Programming (XP). Abstract This report is one of few that discuss teamwork in software development having the agile methodology Scrum in the main focus. The report focus on teamwork and team effectiveness. It discuss existing literature concerning Scrum and teamwork as well as showing the results from an observed ethnographically informed study of an agile project. All findings, challenges and opportunities, are analyzed and compared to theories around teamwork. The primary literature used are case studies about Scrum conducted in the past five years. Some descriptive literature is also used to support my findings. Abstract My main results are that solid leadership and members willing to adapt are of great importance. I also found that working in a closed room together facilitates teamwork and can increase team effectivenes. My teamwork model and framework for this project might not be completely optimal for this specific observed project. Overall, I have found that Scrum can be hard to adapt to. However, the agile practices facilitates team effectiveness. In addition, my results show that Scrum guidelines support communication and adaptability.Abstract Ultimately, it is interesting to see what can be improved in agile methods and to what extent team effectiveness changes.Abstract Keywords: Agile development, Scrum, Teamwork, Team effectiveness, Team performance