Challenges to Teamwork: A Multiple Case Study of Two Agile Teams

Agile software development has become the standard in many companies. While there are reports of major improvements with agile development over traditional development, many teams still strive to work effectively as a team. A multiple case study in two companies discovered challenges related to communication, learning and selecting the tasks according to the priority list. For example, the fact that the developers were not actively involved in the planning process, resulted in weak team orientation; even though the teams had identified and discussed recurring problems, they found it difficult to improve their teamwork practices; and because customers and support communicated tasks directly to the developers and developers chose tasks according to interest and expertise, following the priority list became difficult. We provide practical suggestions for teamwork in agile software development that intend to overcome these problems and strengthen team orientation and team learning in order to achieve effective agile teams.