5.1 General Discussion of Results
Table
10 provides a summary of the key findings and practical implications in general.
Table 10
Summary of key findings and implications in general
Lack of social interactions | Lack of social interactions can result in negative consequences in relation |
| to psychological safety, well-being, and teamwork in general. |
Informal environments | Informal environments are important for non-work-related conversations |
| and social interactions, both within and outside the team, which have a |
| positive impact on work-related activities. |
Team maturity and | Lack of social activities and informal environments, and communication |
teamwork debt | issues, may have led to a debt regarding team maturity and teamwork |
| that needs to be handled when the teams are back onsite again. |
Several different areas of ASD have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The most affected areas are related to social interactions and communication, whereas more technical areas have been less affected. It is evident that technical agile practices, such as test-driven development and continuous integration, and other aspects of a more individual character have been functioning well, even during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, for aspects of more social nature, the results are different. The lack of social interactions can result in negative consequences in relation to, for example, psychological safety, personalities, well-being and teamwork in general. Looking at the agile values and principles of the agile manifesto, to value “individuals and interactions over processes and tools” (Beck et al.
2001a), have become more difficult now since there is a need to put more emphasis on processes and tools in a remote setting. Practitioners cannot communicate without relying on digital tools or setting up processes for how to communicate and interact with colleagues. Although digital communication works, it is not the same as face-to-face communication.
Agile principles such as “build projects around motivated individuals” and “give them the environment and support they need” (Beck et al.
2001a), have become more difficult to follow and address, which is in line with (Mancl and Fraser
2020). The practitioners have indeed received the needed technical support, but lacked support for creating the needed informal environments. The informal environments are important for having non-work-related conversations and social interactions, both within and outside of their own teams, which have a positive impact on work-related activities. However, this does not happen as often now as before the COVID-19 pandemic. Some practitioners feel inhibited by the virtual nature of communication, and experience that activities of these kinds are more challenging now compared to before the COVID-19 pandemic. However, despite this, many practitioners do believe that remote work has worked better than expected, and realized that there are some positive aspects of remote work, such as the flexibility of managing their own time.
Some practitioners expressed that they would like to work remotely, at least some days a week, even after the COVID-19 pandemic. This is particularly interesting, considering the lack of social interactions when working remotely and the belief that communication works best if all are onsite or all are remote, whereas hybrid communication
11 is not preferred. What the long-term effects and implications of this will be, are yet to be shown. However, there is a risk that practitioners have been affected in a way that will make it challenging to go back to what previously was known as the normal, even if possible. Hence, it is important that these challenges are addressed and mitigated. Therefore, companies should expect a debt regarding team maturity and teamwork that needs to be taken action upon when teams once again are back onsite.
5.2 Employment of Agile Development and Ways of Working (RQ1)
Table
11 provides a summary of the key findings and practical implications for employment of agile development and ways of working.
Table 11
Summary of key findings and implications for employment of agile development and ways of working
Decreased appreciation | There has been a significant increase in number of meetings since work-related |
for meetings in | and catching up with colleagues are scheduled as meetings, and an increase in |
general | back-to-back meetings which may result in more stressed and less motivated |
| practitioners. The increase in meetings in combination with challenges with |
| digital meeting structure, e.g., hybrid meetings, have led to a decreased |
| appreciation for meetings. |
Hybrid meetings | Hybrid meetings are less effective and more challenging compared to meetings |
| where all participants are either remote or onsite. Hybrid meetings creates a |
| gap between participants that are onsite and those who are remote. |
Stand up meetings, | These three agile practices have |
retrospectives, and | been particularly important. They all have been used to compensate for lack |
pair programming | of casual conversations. Syncing conversations that usually existed in person |
| in the office are now carried out during more and longer stand up meetings. |
| etrospective aspects, such as reflections and continuous improvement have |
| become more important than the retrospective meetings per se. Pair |
| programming is not only particularly important for teams and teamwork in |
| a remote setting, but also for integrating new team members and facilitate |
| knowledge sharing. |
The transition from in person to digital communication has led to a significant increase of meetings, which confirm the results in Miller et al. (
2021). However, Russo et al. (
2021b) reported on a decrease in number of meetings during the COVID-19 pandemic. The difference between the studies may be explained by the focus and timing, i.e., Russo et al. (
2021b) mainly focused on technical roles, such as developers, and their study was conducted a few months into the pandemic, while we focused on more than just technical roles (e.g., agile coaches, product owners etc.) and our study was conducted one year into the pandemic.
One reason for the increased number of meetings is that not only work-related topics, but also catching up with colleagues and asking them how they are doing are scheduled as meetings, which is in line with Neumann et al. (
2021). Hence, all communication, including what used to be brought up in spontaneous and casual conversations, have now turned into meetings. However, it is not only an increase in frequency of meetings, but also an increase of back-to-back meetings, which in turn may result in more stressed and less motivated practitioners. The increase of meetings, in combination with the challenges with the digital meeting structure, e.g., hybrid meetings, may explain why the appreciation for meetings have decreased now, compared to before the COVID-19 pandemic. However, non-scheduled activities with fewer attendees, e.g., pair programming, are seen as more spontaneous, casual, and easier to conduct than digital meetings. This may explain why the appreciation for communication has increased, while the appreciation for meetings has decreased.
Hybrid meetings are seen to be less effective and more challenging compared to meetings where all participants are either remote or onsite, which is in line with (Marek et al.
2021; Mancl and Fraser
2020; McConnell and Stuart
2020). One reason hybrid meetings are less effective is because it creates a gap between participants that are onsite and those who are remote. This was only realized when everyone started to work remotely. The gap refers to how the meeting participants interact with each other. The ones who are onsite can easily talk to each other in a spontaneous way, while the ones who are remote have to rely on digital tools, and therefore have to approach and contact their colleagues in a more deliberate way. This unbalance creates a difference that not only can affect the relationships between team members, but may also result in that some information is lost since only the onsite participants are involved in the informal interactions that keep people up to date on, e.g., what to discuss in an upcoming meeting or regarding who is working when and from where. However, despite the challenges of hybrid communication, practitioners still want to work in a hybrid model in the future. This creates a challenge regarding future work arrangements and workplaces since the challenges of hybrid communication will still be evident. How to work in a hybrid model, and to maintain social interactions, keep hybrid communication to a minimum, and being able to reap some of the benefits of remote work is yet to be seen.
The importance of having casual conversations has become evident and there have been attempts to create a virtual environment for casual conversations by integrating them into three agile practices, namely: stand up meetings, retrospectives, and pair programming. These three agile practices have been particularly important during the COVID-19 pandemic since it is in relation to these practices that casual conversations can occur more naturally now. Schmidtner et al. (
2021) found that only daily stand up meetings are used to address the lack of casual conversations, and that stand up meetings and retrospectives were found to be particularly important. One reason that may explain the difference between the studies is the respondents. A majority of the respondents in Schmidtner et al. (
2021) had management positions, while in our study, a majority had technical roles. Meaning, respondents with management positions may not do pair programming as much as, e.g., developers, and therefore not view pair programming to be especially important.
To compensate for the lack of casual conversations, practitioners have been increasing the number of stand ups, extending the use of pair programming, and valuing retrospectives more now, than before the COVID-19 pandemic. Both non-work-related and work-related conversations that took place in the office are now manifested in the increased use of remote pair programming to enable closer teamwork. In addition, pair programming is not only particularly important for teams and teamwork in a remote setting, but also for integrating new team members and facilitate knowledge sharing during a pandemic. Syncing conversations that usually existed in hallways, by the coffee machine, in the office kitchen, or before meetings, are now carried out during more and longer stand up meetings. Retrospective aspects, such as reflections and continuous improvement have become more important than the retrospective meetings per se. In addition, retrospectives have become a space to ask how people are feeling and doing during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the importance of retrospectives is confirmed by Miller et al. (
2021).
Mancl and Fraser (
2020) discussed that “agile work practices are harder to perform given the virtual nature of meetings and interactions”, compared to before the COVID-19 pandemic, which is partly confirmed in our study. Some agile practices, e.g., retrospectives and pair programming, are more challenging, some, e.g., continuous integration, automated testing are neither more nor less challenging, while other agile practices, e.g., stand ups, are less challenging to perform now. In general, agile practices of more social nature (e.g., pair/mob programming) have been experienced to be more challenging than those of a more technical nature (e.g., test-driven development). One reason is that online tools were already in use for several technical practices before the COVID-19 pandemic; for example, Jira was used for issue tracking before the pandemic, and is still in use. However, for pair/mob programming, there has been an increased usage, both among experienced and inexperienced users, for which the latter may had to deal with a learning curve. This may explain why pair/mob programming is more challenging to perform now, especially since there has been a challenge in testing and using new online tools for digital pair programming.
Contrary to other social agile practices, stand up meetings were less challenging to perform now, compared to before the pandemic. The reason seems to be that there is a difference between stand up meetings and general meetings, both regarding the structure and appreciation. A stand up meeting is used for syncing between team members in a sequential way. Team members taking turns is also discussed in Mancl and Fraser (
2020) as being more suitable in a virtual setting than in a physical one. The challenges of a digital meeting structure, such as people talking over each other and that some are silent, may therefore not be as prominent in a virtual stand up meeting as in a virtual retrospective or general virtual meeting. This may also explain why stand up meetings are more appreciated than meetings in general.
5.3 Impact of Recommended or Enforced Remote Work (RQ2)
Table
12 provides a summary of the key findings and practical implications for recommended or enforced remote work.
Table 12
Summary of key findings and implications for recommended or enforced remote work
Feeling forced | There is a difference between being and feeling forced to work remotely, which |
| is important to acknowledge in order to minimize its effect. Feeling forced affects |
| many aspects negatively, such as productivity, communication, meeting quality, and |
| well-being. This is essential when considering future work arrangements. It is |
| important to either let the practitioner choose where to work (in office or remote), |
| or all team members should be working under the same premise, i.e., all in office or |
| all remotely. |
Conflicts and | A substantial number of practitioners have changed teams during the pandemic, but |
disagreements | conflicts and disagreements in their teams have not substantially increased. For a |
| new team to mature, and eventually perform as a group, it is important to go through |
| a phase of conflicts and disagreements. This may be a warning signal that the teams |
| have not matured enough to perform at their very best. Hence, more conflicts may |
| arise when the teams start working together onsite. |
This study is unique in the way that it investigates what impact a forced or recommended remote work situation has on agile software development and its practitioners. Other studies (McConnell and Stuart
2020; Machado et al.
2021; Oz and Crooks
2020) have mentioned the forced and/or mandatory situation, but not investigated the feelings of being forced to work remotely further.
One of the main findings of this study is whether a practitioner feels forced to work remotely or not, has an impact on e.g., their well-being, productivity, communication, and experience of stand up meetings. Even though there is a considerable difference in being forced, and feeling forced to work remotely, the difference is not acknowledged. For example, several practitioners mentioned that it is not possible to feel forced to work remotely since they are not forced to do so, and in practice, they can work from wherever they want. However, there is an underlying theme of putting the needs and wishes of other colleagues first, which may create a feeling of being forced to work remotely. Even though a practitioner would rather work in the office, he/she may feel the need to work from home since other colleagues may not be able to create an optimal work environment at home. Another way of feeling forced is in the opposite direction, i.e., the experience of feeling forced work in the office when working from home is preferred. For example, practitioners who are not as worried of catching the COVID-19 virus as their colleagues, may feel forced to go into the office when there are, e.g., hardware issues that requires an onsite presence.
Practitioners who have expressed feeling forced to work remotely have been told to work remotely, while practitioners who are free to go into office when needed do not feel forced. This may mean that they have to be forced to in order to feel forced. However, feeling forced to work remotely or not is not dependent on the primary reason for working from home, i.e., whether it is a recommendation, enforcement or own choice. It rather seems to depend on switching teams and/or employment during the COVID-19 pandemic, and that practitioners who have not met their new team members in real life, are more negative to the work situation, and therefore also may feel more forced to work remotely than others.
It is important to acknowledge that there indeed is a difference between being and feeling forced to work remotely in order to minimize its effect on agile software development aspects. Especially in similar circumstances in the future since feeling forced affects many aspects negatively, such as productivity, communication, meeting quality, and well-being. This is essential when considering future work arrangements. If a practitioner has the opportunity to choose where to work, he/she should be able to do so without taking other colleagues wishes and needs into consideration. On the other hand, if a practitioner cannot choose, he/she and his/her colleagues should be working under the same premise, that is, all in office or all remotely.
A majority of the practitioners have experienced an increased productivity or not been affected negatively, which is in line with NicCanna et al. (
2021), Bao et al. (
2020), Ford et al. (
2020), but contradicts Ralph et al. (
2020). However, almost a third reported a decreased productivity, which contributes to the fact that practitioners have dichotomous experiences of productivity, as discussed in Ford et al. (
2020). Unique to this study is the analysis of the relation between productivity and feeling forced to work remotely. Although, not necessarily surprising, one of the main findings is that a practitioner who feels forced to work remotely experiences a lower productivity now, compared to before the COVID-19 pandemic, than a practitioner who does not feel forced.
One unexpected finding was the large number of practitioners who switched teams and/or employment during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite not being the focus of this study, several aspects regarding the challenges of joining a new team or company during the pandemic became evident, which is in line with reported virtual on-boarding in Kude (
2020), Mancl and Fraser (
2020). In addition, knowing your colleagues, and especially having met them in real life, have a big impact on opening up, avoiding misunderstandings, working better as a team in general, and being more content with your work situation. If possible, new team members should meet their new colleagues in person, e.g., via social on-boarding activities, which is in line with Rizvi et al. (
2015). However, completely new teams formed during the COVID-19 pandemic do not experience the same challenges, which may be due to that everyone has been exposed to the same challenge and/or developed a better understanding for each other’s situation.
Another interesting finding, which is also discussed in Neumann et al. (
2021), is that conflicts and disagreements in teams have not substantially increased now, compared to before the COVID-19 pandemic. This is interesting since a substantial number of practitioners have changed teams during the pandemic. That conflicts and disagreements have not increased can partly be explained by a reluctance to bringing up sensitive conversations digitally. Another explanation may be related to the belief that remote work is only temporary, and thus these conversations have been put on hold until they are back in the office. Considering the challenges with digital communication, and the large number of practitioners who have changed teams during the COVID-19 pandemic, it would not have been surprising if conflicts and disagreements had increased. As first introduced by Tuckman (
1965), a new group usually go through four phases—Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing—until they can perform at their very best. Storming is a phase where many conflicts within a group appear, and it is important to go through this phase in order to mature, and eventually perform as a group (Tuckman
1965). However, since conflicts and disagreements in teams have not substantially increased, this may be a warning signal that several teams have not gone through all of these phases, which means that they have not matured enough to perform at their very best. In addition, this may lead to that more conflicts and issues arise when the teams start working together onsite again. To make room for, and address a team maturing dept, as also suggested by Kude (
2020), is of out most importance even now, but especially when teams do go back the office.