Agile Teamwork: A Case Study

The presence of teamwork with high productivity at each stage of an agile software development plays a significant role in project success. Agile methods put more focus on the people factors, individual’s talents and skills of team that simplify the software development process. Thus, there is a further need to understand how teamwork affects individual behaviour and productivity within an agile team. In addition, software development requires knowledge worker’s mental work for knowledge generation which is used as a controlling part of the work [1]. This concept may change the way of observation and interpretation of software productivity, since knowledge is complex and hard to evaluate. Consequently, it becomes difficult in achieving a reliable

Team performance refers to evaluation of the results of the teamwork. Such results are the quality of the developed software, the ability of the team to meet project goals and budgets, and the motivation of team members to work together in the future. Moe et al. [5] used two team performance models to explain teamwork in a project adopting Scrum: The Salas et al. model [11] and the Dickenson McIntyre model [12]. Melo et al. used the “Input Process Output” model to identify team productivity factors in a multiple case study. Dingsoyr et al.[13] described agile software development as a sociotechnical system comprised of human (socio) and technical entities. Technological interventions do not increase sociotechnical system effectiveness if they are not supported by social (self-managing team and group) components of the system. Such team interactions are one of the important part in software development. Thus, recent focus on agile software development has increased interest in analysing self-managing agile teams and how to effectively make teams productive [13]. Boehm (1981) reported in his productivity estimation model (COCOMO II) that productivity of software development projects is mostly affected by who developed the system and how well the team was organized and managed. Scacchi [14] also identified that poorly managed or organized project’s productivity was

There is a need to identify and analyse links between conceptual teamwork components to establish informative cause-effect relationships. Identification of influence factors is also needed for this analysis purpose.

The understanding of software productivity is still tied to old concepts that are not linked to the complexity and innovation demanded from agile development teams. This gap hampers the industry ability to effectively manage software productivity. A better understanding of the factors influencing teamwork productivity can enable project management team to more effectively allocate their resources, provide better support, increase motivation, and enhance team worker’s commitment to productivity improvement.

Using the proposed model, the agile software development’s project manager may identify the root causes of a decrease in productivity. Thus, the agile teamwork productivity may be improved by implementation of proper