Strategies and habits for adapting the plan in agile teams: a grounded theory and improvisation perspective

The ability of agile teams to adapt the project plan to unexpected problems is still a less-researched area. They must change the project plans as facing unexpected challenges and, even though existing studies relate some aspects to this ability, such as participatory decision-making, openness to di...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor: Reigado, Carolina Rodrigues
Tipo de recurso: tesis de maestría
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2018
País:Brasil
Institución:Universidade de São Paulo (USP)
Repositorio:Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações da USP
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:teses.usp.br:tde-17122018-090903
Acceso en línea:http://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/18/18156/tde-17122018-090903/
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Adaptação
Adaptation
Agile teams
Agilidade
Agility
Desenvolvimento de software
Equipes ágeis
Gestão de projetos
Project management
Software development
Descripción
Sumario:The ability of agile teams to adapt the project plan to unexpected problems is still a less-researched area. They must change the project plans as facing unexpected challenges and, even though existing studies relate some aspects to this ability, such as participatory decision-making, openness to discuss problems in an immediate sense and focus on actions to be taken in near future, these studies do not yet offer a complete theory, or set of practices, about how adaptation takes place. What actions and decisions of the team allow for adaptation? Improvisation is an approach that could potentially fill this gap and consists of someone executing an action without previously planning it, or doing it differently from the original plan, when facing a problem. This study presents an investigation of how agile teams adapt when facing unexpected changes or problems during the projects. The concept of improvisation is used and the study involved two agile software development teams and using Grounded Theory (GT). The results indicate that the teams apply different improvisation strategies, such as breaking standard work rules, as well as maintain habits that contribute positively to improvisation. Clients also play an important role in helping teams solve unexpected problems and should be invited to collaborate. These results can be used to assist professionals in search of more effectiveness in agile teams in terms of adapting the plan during the project.