A qualitative study of the determinants of self-managing team effectiveness in a scrum team

There are many evidences in the literature that the use self-managing teams has positive impacts on several dimensions of team effectiveness. Agile methods, supported by the Agile Manifesto, defend the use of self-managing teams in software development in substitution of hierarchically managed, traditional teams. The goal of this research was to study how a self-managing software team works in practice and how the behaviors of the software organization support or hinder the effectiveness of such teams. We performed a single case holistic case study, looking in depth into the actual behavior of a mature Scrum team in industry. Using interviews and participant observation, we collected qualitative data from five team members in several interactions. We extract the behavior of the team and of the software company in terms of the determinants of self-managing team effectiveness defined in a theoretical model from the literature. We found evidence that 17 out of 24 determinants of this model exist in the studied context. We concluded that certain determinants can support or facilitate the adoption of methodologies like Scrum, while the use of Scrum may affect other determinants.