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

Abstract

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.