Volume 15, Number 3

Psychological Antecedents to Emergence of Team Autonomy in Agile Scrum Teams

  Authors

Ravikiran Kalluri, Old Dominion University, USA

  Abstract

Agile project management methods are gaining in popularity in the software industry as software development teams are being asked to be adaptive to market needs and resilient to change and uncertainty. With increasing market uncertainty, global competition, and time-to-market pressure, it is becoming a challenge to develop an innovative product and deliver it on-time without the opportunity that comes from team autonomy to experiment and learn from failures. The purpose of this research study was to study the influence of key psychological factors on emergence of Agile team autonomy that leads to Agile project success in software organizations. Using an online survey instrument, the study sampled 137 software professionals from US software companies with experience in the Agile Scrum role of Team Member. The relationship between the human psychology factors pertaining to leadership style, organization structure, human resource practices, customer engagement and Agile team autonomy is explained through multiple linear regression. One-way ANOVA and Pearson’s correlation coefficient were used to demonstrate the existence (or nonexistence) of relationships between variables. Finally, an empirical model relating the human psychology factor variables and the dependent variable of Agile team autonomy was constructed for the population.

  Keywords

Agile, Scrum, Team Members, Organization Psychology, Leadership Style, Human Resource Practices.