Abstract
The majority of software developers work in teams and are thus influenced by team norms. Norms are shared expectations of how to behave and regulate the interaction between team members. Our aim of this study is to gain more knowledge about team norms in software teams and to increase the understanding of how norms influence teamwork in agile software development projects. We conducted a study of norms in four agile teams located in Norway and Malaysia. The analysis of 22 interviews revealed that we could extract a varied set of both injunctive and descriptive norms. Our results suggest that team norms have an important role in enabling team performance.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Forsyth, D.R.: Group Dynamics. Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, Belmont (2010)
Katzenbach, J., Smith, D.: The discipline of teams. Harvard Bus. Rev. 71, 1–11 (1993)
Duhigg, C.: What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team. http://goo.gl/6md7HQ
Pikkarainen, M., Haikara, J., Salo, O., Abrahamsson, P., Still, J.: The impact of agile practices on communication in software development. Empir. Softw. Eng. 13, 303–337 (2008)
Moe, N.B., Dingsøyr, T., Dybå, T.: A teamwork model for understanding an agile team: a case study of a scrum project. Inf. Softw. Technol. 52, 480–491 (2010)
Moe, N.B., Dingsøyr, T., Dybå, T.: Overcoming barriers to self-management in software teams. IEEE Softw. 26, 20–26 (2009)
Lenberg, P., Feldt, R., Wallgren, L.G.R.: Behavioral software engineering: a definition and systematic literature review. J. Syst. Softw. 107, 15–37 (2015)
Cialdini, R.B., Reno, R.R., Kallgren, C.A.: A focus theory of normative conduct: recycling the concept of norms to reduce littering in public places. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 58, 1015–1026 (1990)
Barker, J.R.: Tightening the iron cage: concertive control in self-managing teams. Adm. Sci. Q. 38, 408–437 (1993)
Terry, D.J., Hogg, M.A.: Group norms and the attitude-behavior relationship: a role for group identification. Pers. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 22, 776–793 (1996)
Levine, J.M., Moreland, R.L.: Progress in small group research. Ann. Rev. Psychol. 41, 585–634 (1990)
Hackman, J.R.: The design of work teams. In: Handbook of Organizational Behavior, pp. 315–342. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs (1987)
Cialdini, R.B., Trost, M.R.: Social influence: social norms, conformity and compliance. In: Handbook of Social Psychology, pp. 151–193. McGraw-Hill, New York (1998)
Teh, A., Baniassad, E., Van Rooy, D., Boughton, C.: Social psychology and software teams: establishing task-effective group norms. IEEE Softw. 29, 53–58 (2012)
Nerur, S., Mahapatra, R., Mangalaraj, G.: Challenges of migrating to agile methodologies. Commun. ACM 48, 72–78 (2005)
McHugh, O.: A study of clan control in agile software development teams. Ph.D. thesis, NUI Galway (2011)
Moe, N.B.: Key challenges of improving agile teamwork. In: Baumeister, H., Weber, B. (eds.) XP 2013. LNBIP, vol. 149, pp. 76–90. Springer, Heidelberg (2013). doi:10.1007/978-3-642-38314-4_6
Sharp, J.H., Ryan, S.D.: A preliminary conceptual model for exploring global agile teams. In: Abrahamsson, P., Baskerville, R., Conboy, K., Fitzgerald, B., Morgan, L., Wang, X. (eds.) XP 2008. LNBIP, vol. 9, pp. 147–160. Springer, Heidelberg (2008). doi:10.1007/978-3-540-68255-4_15
Dickinson, T.L., McIntyre, R.M.: A conceptual framework of teamwork measurement. In: Team Performance Assessment and Measurement: Theory, Methods, and Applications, pp. 19–43. Psychology Press, NJ (1997)
Stray, V., Sjøberg, D.I.K., Dybå, T.: The daily stand-up meeting: a grounded theory study. J. Syst. Softw. 114, 101–124 (2016)
Aurum, A., Wohlin, C., Porter, A.: Aligning software project decisions: a case study. Intl. J. Softw. Eng. Knowl. Eng. 16, 795–818 (2006)
Feldman, D.C.: The development and enforcement of group norms. Acad. Manage. Rev. 9, 47–53 (1984)
Edmondson, A.C.: Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Adm. Sci. Q. 44, 350–383 (1999)
Benner, M.J., Tushman, M.L.: Exploitation, exploration, and process management: the productivity dilemma revisited. Acad. Manage. Rev. 28, 238–256 (2003)
Kirsch, L.J., Ko, D.-G., Haney, M.H.: Investigating the antecedents of team-based clan control: adding social capital as a predictor. Organ. Sci. 21, 469–489 (2010)
Hogan, S.J., Coote, L.V.: Organizational culture, innovation, and performance: a test of Schein’s model. J. Bus. Res. 67, 1609–1621 (2014)
Schein, E.H.: Coming to a new awareness of organizational culture. Sloan Manage. Review. 25, 3–16 (1984)
Acknowledgments
We thank Yngve Lindsjørn and Øystein Ingebrigtsen for assisting with data collection. We also thank the participants for sharing their experiences with us. This work was supported by the Smiglo project, which is partly funded by the Research Council of Norway under the grant 235359/O30.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Stray, V., Fægri, T.E., Moe, N.B. (2016). Exploring Norms in Agile Software Teams. In: Abrahamsson, P., Jedlitschka, A., Nguyen Duc, A., Felderer, M., Amasaki, S., Mikkonen, T. (eds) Product-Focused Software Process Improvement. PROFES 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10027. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49094-6_31
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49094-6_31
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-49093-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-49094-6
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)