Teamwork Quality and Team Performance: Exploring Differences Between Small and Large Agile Projects

Yngve Lindsjørn,Gunnar R Bergersen,Dag I K Sjøberg,Torgeir Dingsøyr

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-91602-6_19

Yngve Lindsjørn, Gunnar R Bergersen + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91602-6_19

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Abstract

Abstract Agile principles were originally developed for small projects but are now widely used in larger projects with hundreds of developers. Teamwork quality is essential in any development work, but how does teamwork quality differ in small and large agile projects? We report from an explorative survey with 64 agile teams and 320 team members and team leaders, from 31 teams in small projects and 33 teams in large projects. For small projects, teamwork quality was considered by both team members and team leaders to primarily affect product quality. For large projects, the effect of teamwork quality on product quality was positive when it was rated by team members but was negative when rated by team leaders. At a finer granularity, the six dimensions of teamwork quality that we investigated affected team performance differently in small and large projects. These findings question to what extent findings from previous studies on teamwork in agile development in small projects apply to large projects.

Highlights

Agile software development methods have become mainstream [1]
Variability (SD) in ratings given by team members was higher for both product and project quality than for the six teamwork quality variables; variability was even higher for ratings given by team leaders
By analyzing data from 64 software teams, we have shown that there appears to be a disagreement between team members and team leaders in the evaluation of team performance for large projects

Summary

Introduction

Agile software development methods have become mainstream [1]. Aimed at development in small teams, agile methods are used in large software projects [6]. There are a growing number of studies on large-scale agile development that focus on topics such as how product owners are involved in development and how to achieve inter-team coordination [6, 7]. This paper explores differences between small and large-scale projects with respect to teamwork quality and its effect on team performance. We state the following research question: How does the effect of teamwork quality on team performance differ between small and large projects?. This paper reports a study on the extent to which the effect of teamwork quality on team performance is moderated by the size of development projects

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