How agile teams make self-assignment work: a grounded theory study

Masood, Zainab; Hoda, Rashina; Blincoe, Kelly

doi:10.1007/s10664-020-09876-x

Cited by 34 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…Since the focus of this study is to understand processes, examine strategies and explore underlying behaviors, grounded theory was particularly suitable (Masood et al, 2020a). In addition, the grounded theory method is also applicable to explaining how and why phenomena occur (Hoda, 2021).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Balancing between stability and change in Agile teams

Lindskog

Netz

2021

IJMPB

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PurposeThis study aims to create a better understanding of how practitioners implement and work Agile while balancing the tensions arising between stability and change.Design/methodology/approachA grounded theory approach was used to explore what happens in practice when software development teams implement and work Agile. The empirical data consists of twenty semi-structured interviews with practitioners working in fourteen different organizations and in six different Agile roles.FindingsAs a result, a substantive theory was presented of continuously balancing between stability and change in Agile teams. In addition, the study also proposes three guidelines that can help organizations about to change their way of working to Agile.Research limitations/implicationsThe inherent limitation of a grounded theory study is that a substantial theory can only explain the specific contexts explored in that study. Thus, this study's contribution is a substantial theory that needs to be further developed and improved.Practical implicationsThe proposed guidelines can help organizations about to change their way of working to Agile. They can also assist organizations in switching from “doing Agile” to “being Agile”, thus becoming more successful.Originality/valueThe new perspective that this study contributes is the fact that our discovered categories show that several inherent processes are ongoing at the same time in order to balance the need to have both stability and change.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Balancing between stability and change in Agile teams

Lindskog

Netz

2021

IJMPB

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“…Grounded theory has been used to study human and social aspects of software engineering, including software process improvement (Coleman and O'Connor;, customer collaboration , self-organisation 2012b), product management (Jantunen and Gause;, software architecture (Waterman et al;, daily standup meeting (Stray et al;, agile transformations 2017), software development waste (Sedano et al;2017), self-assignment practice 2020a), and variations in scrum practice 2020b). Some exemplar GT studies in software engineering that describe both their method application and the resulting theory in sufficient detail are listed in Table 1.…”

Section: The Progressmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is the mechanism through which researcher reflection is systematically documented and used for theory development. Examples of memos can be found in 2012a) and 2020a).…”

Section: Basic Memoingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…GT has become increasingly popular in software engineering to investigate its human-centric and social aspects. It has been applied successfully to understand complex phenomenon such as software process improvement (Coleman and O'Connor;, customer collaboration , self-organisation 2012b), software product management challenges (Jantunen and Gause;, daily standup meeting (Stray et al;, agile transformations 2017), self-assignment 2020a), variations in scrum practice 2020b), and the role of the scrum master .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Socio-Technical Grounded Theory for Software Engineering

Hoda

2021

Preprint

Self Cite

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Grounded Theory (GT), a sociological research method designed to study social phenomena, is increasingly being applied to investigate human-centric and social aspects of software engineering. Despite its strong potential, GT remains a largely misunderstood, misused, and poorly presented and evaluated method in software engineering. Inevitably, software engineering researchers attempt to adapt traditional GT to suit their unique socio-technical contexts but without philosophical rationales or methodological justification. At the heart of these challenges lies the misalignment of GT's traditional social sciences approach to studying what is an inherently and inextricably socio-technical discipline and the absence of clear methodological guidelines to bridge the gap. Motivated by the needs of the software engineering research community and an acknowledgement of the misalignment of the traditional GT methods to studying an increasingly socio-technical world, this paper outlines the Socio-Technical Grounded Theory (STGT) method, a variant of the traditional GT methods. With its unique socio-technical lens, STGT presents philosophical and methodological guidance for studying socio-technical phenomena and theory development in software engineering and related disciplines.

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“…Some suggested references that might add additional perspectives are [10], [11]. With regards to the study of self-organization in the agile literature, there exist some works such as the paper that laid the foundations of selforganization in the agile context [12], or the work in [13], a reliable academic study involving 58 agile practitioners from 23 different organizations, in which some spontaneous roles that make agile teams self-organizing are identified. We refer to [14], [13] and references therein for a detailed literature compilation on self-organization in agile teams.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Leadership Styles in Agile Teams: An Analysis Based on Experience

et al. 2022

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This study covers the lack of literature analyzing the empirical relationship between leadership and selfmanagement in agile frameworks. We have conducted a comprehensive survey in agile teams in order to analyze the relation between the self-management concept and the different types of leadership that occur in such teams. To perform the study we have followed the Goleman's leadership classification and the Marquet's and Kniberg's self-management models. Besides the previous concepts, we also investigate how different leadership styles exert alignment and autonomy within agile teams. The results of the study show that respondents' perception of self-management in their teams remains similar and significant for all leadership patterns. Moreover, we study the effect of the alignment dimension within the concept of selfmanagement, showing that authoritarian leadership styles, when present in agile teams, compensate low levels of autonomy with high levels of alignment. The statistical evidence of these results has been validated for the sample at hand using statistical hypothesis tests.

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How agile teams make self-assignment work: a grounded theory study

Cited by 34 publications

References 34 publications

Balancing between stability and change in Agile teams

Balancing between stability and change in Agile teams

Socio-Technical Grounded Theory for Software Engineering

Leadership Styles in Agile Teams: An Analysis Based on Experience

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