Agile software development : practices, self-organization, and satisfaction

This chapter deals with the Manifesto’s principle of self-organizing teams. In recent work, the authors examine the state of practice using data from a study of software professionals in Switzerland, especially addressing the issue of overall satisfaction. The chapter reveals that the most striking correlation to satisfaction is the level of adoption of self-managing teams, whereas the strongest hindrances to satisfaction are a lack of ability to change the organizational culture and lack of management support. The analysis shows that technical and collaborative practices were related to self-organization and satisfaction, but were not able to explain satisfaction by themselves. Even with strong technical and collaborative practices, however, satisfaction is not assured, demonstrating that goals of creating timely and successful products and services matter