Behavior-Driven Dynamics in Agile Development: The Effect of Fast Feedback on Teams
Fabian Kortum, Jil Klünder, Kurt A. Schneider · 2019
Agile software development teams strive for fast and continuous feedback. Both the quality of the resulting software and the performance of the team require feedback. The performance of the team developments is often addressed in retrospectives which are not only part of the SCRUM framework, but also in general. Reflecting on incidents during the last sprint helps the team to increase performances, expressed by, e.g., efficiency and productivity. However, it is not only essential to identify volatile sprint performances, but also to characterize the primary cause to solve them. Main reasons for low performance are often not visible, primarily when they are related to social-driven team behavior, such as communication structures, mood, or satisfaction. In this paper, we analyze whether automated team feedback about retrospective sprint-behavior can help the team to increase performances due to additional awareness about the dynamic effects over time. In a comparative case study with 15 software projects and a total of 130 undergraduate students, we investigated the sustainable impact of feedback on human aspects. Our results indicate that automated feedback positively affects team performances - and customer satisfaction.