Team Composition and Team Role Allocation in Agile Project Teams Brian Turrel 30 March 2015

Role of a Scrum Team Self-Governing Cross-Functional – No differentiated roles except Scrum Master and Product Owner Accountable 2

Team Member Selection Criteria Study of Brazilian development teams from a variety of organizations between 2007 and 2012 Looks at different selection criteria for selecting team members and their prevalence among organizations Correlates different selection criteria to project success metrics 3

Team Member Selection Criteria Team building criteria in software projects: A mix-method replicated study – Fabio da Silva et al, Journal of Information and Software Technology, Vol. 55,

Team Member Selection Criteria – Research Questions Two Research Questions – What are the criteria used by software project managers in practice to select individuals to build software teams? – How is the consistent use of team building criteria related to project success? 5

Team Member Selection Criteria Key Findings – Individual factors were more correlated to project success than organizational factors – Technical aspects were most correlated with project success – Agile teams were less dependent of team selection criteria than traditional teams 6

Team Member Selection - Methodology Four stages – Stage 1: Interviews with project managers and team members – Stage 2: Survey to correlate criteria with project success for separate list of organizations – Stage 3: Mapping study of previous studies for team member selection criteria – Stage 4: Replication of Stage 2 survey with additional criteria 7

Team Member Selection - Methodology 8

Team Member Selection – Stage 1 Interviews – Conducted with a project manager and two team members from each organization (to validate the degree that criteria were used) 9

Team Member Selection – Stage 1 Individual Factors – Innate: Personality, Behavior – Technical: Technical Profile, Productivity Organizational Factors: – Operational: Individual Cost, Availability – Strategic: Project Importance, Customer Importance 10

Team Member Selection – Stage 1 Relative Prevalence of Criteria – Technical Profile – Personality – Behavior – Customer Importance – Productivity – Availability – Individual Cost – Project Importance 11

Team Member Selection – Stage 2 Project Success Criteria – Costs – Time – Scope – Team Satisfaction – Client Satisfaction – PM Satisfaction 12

Team Member Selection – Stage 2 Correlation of selection criteria and success goals 13

Team Member Selection – Stage 3 Validate list of selection criteria through literature survey – Identified two additional selection criteria Task Preference Peer Indication 14

Team Member Selection – Stage 4 Replicate Stage 2 survey results with additional criteria and methodology improvements – Distinguished Agile and traditional teams 15

Team Member Selection – Stage 4 Correlation of selection criteria, success goals, and development method 16

Issues with this study Most rigorous elements of the study were related to identifying selection criteria (stages 1 and 3), which was the least interesting aspect of the study Sample sizes for the correlations were relatively small Surveys in stages 2 and 4 did not clearly replicate their findings 17

Other Interesting Takeaways Project managers generally understood that behavior and personality were important to project success, but often felt poorly equipped to formally evaluate team member candidates on that basis Agile teams were less dependent on team member selection criteria for success – One potential explanation is that the self- organizing nature of Agile teams allows members to find a contributing role 18

Self-Organizing Roles on Agile Teams Self-Organizing Roles on Agile Software Development Teams, Rashina Hoda et al., IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, vol 38, March 2013 Self-organized teams are part of the Agile principles, but how does self-organization contribute to team success? 19

Conclusions Agile team become self-organizing as team members take on these roles – Mentor – Coordinator – Translator – Champion – Promoter – Terminator 20

Looking at Self-Organizing Teams Self-organizing teams evaluated from a variety of perspectives – Socio-Technical System – Organizational Theory – Knowledge Management – Complex Adaptive Systems – Software Development 21

Research Method Grounded Theory – General methodology of analysis – Linked with data collection – Generates an inductive theory 22

Data Collection Interviews with 58 participants from 23 organizations in New Zealand and India Field observations Iterative process of data collection 23

Data Analysis Open coding Selective coding Theoretical coding 24

Results 25

Issues with this Study Open-ended process No clear hypothesis or experimental method Results are entirely qualitative 26

Task Allocation in Scrum Teams An Empirical Analysis of Task Allocation in Scrum- based Agile Programming – Jun Lin et al., unpublished Study in an academic setting at Nanyang Technical University in Singapore Students who were new to Scrum recorded completion of various tasks along with the tasks’ perceived difficulty and their confidence in completing them 27

Task Allocation in Scrum Teams Key findings – Students attempted to allocate tasks according to the assignees competence Tasks with high difficulty and short deadlines tended to be assigned to students with high technical productivity – Teams with lower overall competence collaborated more – Students with higher technical productivity reported higher morale on completion of a sprint 28

Task Allocation Study - Methodology Students self-organized into teams of 5-7 Students used a proprietary project tracking system that tracked task assignment and collaboration activities, and recorded student observations about mood, confidence, and expected time to complete tasks. Quality of task completion was determined through peer evaluation and final grade. 29

Task Allocation Study – Definitions Competence – The likelihood that a student will complete a given task with acceptable quality by the deadline Technical Productivity – The amount of work that a student will be able to complete during a development iteration 30

Task Allocation Study - Findings Allocation of difficult and time-sensitive tasks tended to follow competence and technical productivity 31

Task Allocation Study - Findings Groups with less team competence collaborated more 32

Task Allocation Study - Findings Morale increased after a sprint for team members with high technical productivity Morale decreased among teams with high collaboration 33 Before SprintAfter Sprint

Issues with this Study Academic setting among novice developers with limited experience in Scrum No comparison to other Agile or traditional development methodologies 34

Task Allocation Study – Conclusions Scrum provides a process for tasks to be allocated efficiently according to the capability and productivity of the various team members – May mask weak performance by low-productivity team members Scrum provides emotional incentives for high- productivity team members 35