Organizing self-organizing teams

Agile teams are described as "self-organizing". How these teams actually organize themselves in practice, however, is not well understood. Through Grounded Theory research involving 24 Agile practitioners across 14 software organizations in New Zealand and India, we identified six informal roles that team members adopt in order to help their teams self-organize. These roles --- Mentor, Co-ordinator, Translator, Champion, Promoter, and Terminator --- help teams learn Agile practices, liaise with customers, maintain management support, and remove ineffective team members. Understanding these roles will help software teams become self-organizing, and should guide Agile coaches in working with Agile teams.

[1]  Robert Biddle,et al.  The Social Nature of Agile Teams , 2007, Agile 2007 (AGILE 2007).

[2]  Philippe Kruchten,et al.  A methodological leg to stand on: lessons learned using grounded theory to study software development , 2008, CASCON '08.

[3]  B. Glaser.  Doing grounded theory : issues and discussions , 1998 .

[4]  Torgeir Dingsøyr,et al.  Scrum and Team Effectiveness: Theory and Practice , 2008, XP.

[5]  Jr. Frederick P. Brooks,et al.  The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Softw , 1978 .

[6]  James Noble,et al.  The XP Customer Team: A Grounded Theory , 2009, 2009 Agile Conference.

[7]  Steve R. Palmer,et al.  A Practical Guide to Feature-Driven Development , 2002 .

[8]  Rory V. O'Connor,et al.  Using grounded theory to understand software process improvement: A study of Irish software product companies , 2007, Inf. Softw. Technol..

[9]  S. Hart.  New Product Development , 1995 .

[10]  Alistair Cockburn,et al.  Crystal Clear: A Human-Powered Methodology for Small Teams , 2004 .

[11]  Helen Sharp,et al.  Collaboration and co-ordination in mature eXtreme programming teams , 2008, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[12]  Frank Maurer,et al.  Knowledge Sharing in Agile Software Teams , 2004, Logic versus Approximation.

[13]  W. R. Howard.  Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products , 2010 .

[14]  Panos Fitsilis,et al.  Comparing PMBOK and Agile Project Management software development processes , 2007, SCSS.

[15]  Gerard Meszaros,et al.  Cowboys and Indians: Impacts of Cultural Diversity on Agile Teams , 2008, Agile 2008 Conference.

[16]  Nils Brede Moe,et al.  Understanding Shared Leadership in Agile Development: A Case Study , 2009 .

[17]  Frederick P. Brooks,et al.  The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Softw , 1978 .

[18]  Nils Brede Moe,et al.  Understanding Shared Leadership in Agile Development: A Case Study , 2009, 2009 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

[19]  Linda Rising,et al.  The Scrum Software Development Process for Small Teams , 2000, IEEE Softw..

[20]  Helen Sharp,et al.  An Ethnographic Study of XP Practice , 2004, Empirical Software Engineering.

[21]  Edward Uy,et al.  Growing and Sustaining an Offshore Scrum Engagement , 2008, Agile 2008 Conference.

[22]  George Mangalaraj,et al.  Challenges of migrating to agile methodologies , 2005, CACM.

[23]  James Noble,et al.  Agile Undercover: When Customers Don't Collaborate , 2010, XP.

[24]  James A. Highsmith,et al.  Adaptive Software Development: A Collaborative Approach to Managing Complex Systems , 1999 .

[25]  Tore Dybå,et al.  Understanding Self-Organizing Teams in Agile Software Development , 2008, 19th Australian Conference on Software Engineering (aswec 2008).

[26]  Gary B. Wills,et al.  Historical Roots of Agile Methods: Where Did "Agile Thinking" Come From? , 2008, XP.

[27]  Barry W. Boehm,et al.  Management challenges to implementing agile processes in traditional development organizations , 2005, IEEE Software.

[28]  Frank Maurer,et al.  A case study on the impact of scrum on overtime and customer satisfaction , 2005, Agile Development Conference (ADC'05).

[29]  Fred P. Brooks,et al.  The Mythical Man-Month , 1975, Reliable Software.

[30]  Tore Dybå,et al.  Empirical studies of agile software development: A systematic review , 2008, Inf. Softw. Technol..

[31]  K. Beck,et al.  Extreme Programming Explained , 2002 .

[32]  Pekka Abrahamsson,et al.  The impact of agile practices on communication in software development , 2008, Empirical Software Engineering.

[33]  Lavanya R. Abraham.  Cultural differences in software engineering , 2009, ISEC '09.

[34]  Tsun Chow,et al.  A survey study of critical success factors in agile software projects , 2008, J. Syst. Softw..

[35]  S. Georgieva,et al.  Best Practices in Project Management Through a Grounded Theory Lens , 2008 .

[36]  Brian Fitzgerald,et al.  Customising agile methods to software practices at Intel Shannon , 2006, Eur. J. Inf. Syst..

[37]  Kent L. Beck,et al.  Agile management - an oxymoron?: who needs managers anyway? , 2003, OOPSLA '03.

[38]  James Noble,et al.  Negotiating Contracts for Agile Projects: A Practical Perspective , 2009, XP.

[39]  Andrew Begel,et al.  Usage and Perceptions of Agile Software Development in an Industrial Context: An Exploratory Study , 2007, First International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM 2007).

[40]  Andraž Cej,et al.  Agile software development with Scrum , 2010 .

[41]  P. Kidwell,et al.  The mythical man-month: Essays on software engineering , 1996, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing.

[42]  Kent L. Beck,et al.  Extreme programming explained - embrace change , 1990 .

[43]  Mark Summers.  Insights into an Agile Adventure with Offshore Partners , 2008, Agile 2008 Conference.

[44]  Alistair Cockburn,et al.  People and Methodologies in Software Development , 2003 .

[45]  A. Strauss,et al.  The Discovery of Grounded Theory , 1967 .

[46]  Jutta Eckstein,et al.  Xtreme programming and agile coaching , 2003, OOPSLA '03.

[47]  Sanjiv Augustine,et al.  Agile project management: steering from the edges , 2005, CACM.

[48]  A. Cockburn,et al.  Agile Software Development: The People Factor , 2001, Computer.

[49]  Ieee Std,et al.  IEEE Guide Adoption of PMI Standard A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge , 2004 .

[50]  Robert C. Martin.  Agile Software Development, Principles, Patterns, and Practices , 2002 .

[51]  James Noble,et al.  The XP customer role in practice: three studies , 2004, Agile Development Conference.