Conceptualizing an Agile Team Mindset: Paradoxes and Mindsets in Times of Transition

Abstract

Teams in large corporations undergoing a transformation towards agile methods and application of the same are often confronted with a set of paradoxical challenges. In order to deal with these paradoxical challenges and make sense of them, a suitable team mindset is needed. To conceptualize such a mindset and study its interactions with the experienced paradoxes, we have accompanied a European large telecommunications corporation undergoing a second agile transformation after having already undertaken a smaller agile transformation in the past. At three points in time over the course of almost a year, we have interviewed 27 team members, Product Owners, Scrum Masters, and associated leaders, resulting in 81 qualitative semi-structured in-depth interviews. Drawing on this data, we have conceptualized the agile team mindset and developed a framework which explains its interactions with paradoxes. Thereby, we show how experienced paradoxes can foster the agile team mindset via integrating and separating sets of mechanisms and vice versa how the agile team mindset can help dealing with the experienced paradoxes. We contribute to research on mindsets, paradoxes, and integrate agile teams as specific team type into team effectiveness research.