The disruption from pre-pandemic ofice work norm to forced work from home, has been followed by new norms in work arrangements. This has triggered changes in the understanding of the characteristics of a software team work arrangement and what workspace allows the teams to thrive. In response to new demands, many companies are altering their work policies and experimenting with new work arrangements that balance expectations from employees and management, regarding where and when the work should be done. The goal of this work is to investigate these new ways of working, including work arrangements of agile software teams, and hybrid teams in particular, and the work environments of companies. The project will also explore software process improvement ideas that decision makers should consider when dealing with various team work arrangements.
Creating any significant software requires the efort and cooperation of several people – a team.
Two types of teams have been used traditionally to reason about software development: the
traditional or collocated team, and the virtual team [
The word “hybrid” has become one popular umbrella label attributed to various work-related
terms. These days, one can often read about hybrid workplaces or hybrid ofices [
The interest in working remotely from home or in an alternative working space like a café has now become mainstream and has given ground to situations where employees work indiscriminately from either home or the ofice [ 15], shifting team dynamics from those described by virtual team models to those fitting the collocated ones. Employees started to express their wish to keep the job as they move to remote cities or even globally and leave if they are not permitted to work remotely [14, 16]. In response to the new demands, many companies are altering their work policies and experimenting with new work arrangements that balance expectations from employees and management, regarding where and when the work should be done [14].
Software processes and practices, theories, and models currently used in the software industry and in software engineering research are insuficient to accommodate for the new trends as they do not account for these shifting work arrangements, which results in the inability to achieve the full productive potential of agile software teams and to make sense of field material. It is therefore crucial that we gain a better understanding of where employees want to be working and how modifications of the work environment afect ways of working, in order to determine the best way to adjust the workspaces to fit the needs of agile software development teams.
The shift from WFH to work from anywhere (WFX), while predicted [17, 16], has not yet been explored in depth, as recent studies on the topic were conducted prior to, or during the pandemic in a forced WFH situation [18, 19, 20, 11, 16]. Here two major foci of interest can be identified. On the one hand, studies focusing on metrics of developers; under this category, developer productivity [21], productivity and well-being [22, 11, 23], perceived productivity [12], as well as task satisfaction and performance [24], can be found. On the other hand, there are studies investigating specific technical practices [ 25] and the consequences to the processes (e.g., [26]).
As sharply identified by Boland et al. [ 27], “leading organizations will boldly question long held assumptions about how work should be done and the role of the ofice.” However, although briefly discussed in several of the above-mentioned studies, the workspace has not been the focus, likely given the importance during the pandemic to understand the pressing consequences of the forced WFH condition, and only a limited number of studies – yet rapidly growing – can be found that research specifically the workspace and the work arrangements of agile software teams (e.g., [28]).
The goal of this work is therefore: to investigate these new ways of working, i.e., the work arrangements and environments of hybrid agile software teams. The project will also explore software process improvement ideas that decision makers should consider when dealing with various team work arrangements. The scope of this project is visualized in Figure 1. In addition, the project will also explore how these work arrangements, environments, and improvement ideas impact the teams in relation to collaboration and agile practices.
The following research questions have been designed to guide the work in this project:
RQ1: How can the spectrum of emerging hybrid work arrangements of software teams be characterized to achieve better clarity?
RQ2: What are the publication trends and characteristics of existing research on hybrid work in agile software development?
RQ3: How have the work arrangements of agile software teams evolved during and since the covid-19 pandemic?
RQ4: What are the consequences, challenges, and opportunities of current agile software team workspaces and hybrid work arrangements?
RQ5: Which policies, tactics, and ideas can be implemented by companies to support agile software teams in hybrid work arrangements and improve the software development process?
To answer these research questions five studies have been planned, the majority of which are case studies of software teams in Denmark and Finland. The companies that have already expressed interest in participating include IBM, Valtech, Brandwatch, Ericsson, F-Secure, and Kempower, as well as five other companies which have requested they remain anonymous. These companies will be approached as case studies in accordance with the guidance of Yin Robert [29] and Verner et al. [30]. The initial research has already been carried out by performing qualitative interviews in the Danish companies, specifically with practitioners who are in leadership and managerial positions. The characteristics and work arrangements of the software teams were analyzed, with the goal of conceptualizing the team work arrangements and identifying common patterns. These empirical activities have generated results that will provide input for the later research work. The articles and their content are briefly described below:
The first study aims to answer RQ1 and has already been published in IEEE Software [31]. As second author I contributed in the conceptualization and methodology, the investigation and formal analysis, and writing the original draft. The goal of this study was to ofer a vocabulary to avoid the confusion that seems to prevail in the current conversations about hybrid work arrangements. This article systemizes a spectrum of emerging work arrangements for software teams (Figure 2), including hybrid teams, partially aligned teams and, variegated teams with fully aligned alternation of ofice presence. The team typology is based on practical insights from semi-structured interviews with team managers and team leads from six diferent companies.
To provide an answer to RQ2 and share the findings with the research community and with the industry, one systematic mapping study was conducted to gain a good understanding of the research terrain formulated when hybrid work meets agile software development. The study has been submitted to the International Conference on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering (CHASE). As second author I contributed in the investigation and formal analysis, and by writing the original draft. The systematic process followed [32, 33] led to a collection of 12 primary studies, all of which are empirical studies and the majority of these employ case studies as the research methodology. The mapping of the primary studies included: the publication years and types of research articles; employed research methods; and the countries and organisations where the research was carried out. The research questions in the primary studies were also mapped according to a conceptual framework for organizing research questions on hybrid work in software engineering [34], and the team work arrangements were identified and mapped to the team typology in [ 31]. In addition, the online tools used in the hybrid settings, the hybrid work policies, and the agile frameworks, practices, and roles were identified.
The third study aims to answer RQ3 and briefly explores RQ4. To gain insights and collect lessons learned on the consequences of the multitude of decisions that were taken prior to, and during, and after the covid-19 pandemic, this study investigates Danish agile software teams from seven diferent companies through semi-structured and structured interviews with the team leads, managers, Scrum masters, and agile coaches. To capture the various stages of the pandemic and its impact on work arrangements, a longitudinal research design was employed, and data was collected in three stages, beginning in November 2021, and concluding in May 2023 (see Figure 3).
To familiarize with the data as suggested by Braun and Clarke [35], a light thematic analysis of the collected data was carried out using NVivo. At this stage, statements were first coded under several broad topics and later further analyzed in search for themes. Following this initial inductive process, a deductive step was followed to unify the terminology used by the interviewees. In this step, the team typology proposed in [31] was instantiated with the data which allowed a consistent view over the evolution of the described teams. The changes to the work arrangements were also coupled with insights into the work policies decided by each company. The results of the study highlight the emergence of a dynamic spectrum of work arrangements, reflecting a newfound flexibility that accommodates a diverse array of work schedules and locations. The study also briefly explores the implications of these shifting work arrangements and policies on company, leadership and management, and team levels.
Possible Publication Venue: Journal of Systems and Software
Alternative Publication Venue: Empirical Software Engineering
This study is centered around RQ4, and the creation of a detailed knowledge base designed to exemplify the consequences, challenges, and opportunities derived from two diferent experimental workspaces and hybrid work arrangements for agile software teams in the Finnish R&D department of Ericsson. The study will also explore RQ5 and software process improvement ideas that decision makers should consider when dealing with various agile team work arrangements and workspaces. The company is currently in the process of changing their ofice workspaces and has implemented a principle that states employees should work from the ofice two days a week. For one group of 70 employees, these two days are not fixed, while the other group of 60+ employees are expected to work from the ofice on Tuesdays and Thursdays specifically. The study will investigate the impact of these two diferent work arrangements and the undergoing changes to the ofice space on company, team, and individual levels, by conducting semi-structured interviews with the employees in December-January 2023, and again in June-July 2024 to compare the results.
A particular focus will be put on investigating how the experimental work arrangements and workspaces impact team collaboration and agile practices. In addition, the study will also capture metrics to determine; the value of fixed seating and other areas of the workspace, e.g., hallways and gyms; the motivation of employees for using the ofice spaces; and explore tactics the company can implement to support the software teams and improve the software development process, while these changes to the workspace and work arrangements are taking place.
Possible Publication Venue: International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM Conference)
Alternative Publication Venue: Journal of Systems and Software
This study is centered around RQ5 and is designed to further explore the various software process improvement ideas identified in Article 4 against the characteristics and arrangements of hybrid software teams defined in Articles 1, 2, and 3. The study leverages the experimentation that happened during the pandemic and is currently ongoing, by collecting software process improvement ideas and changes to the software practices in general, via surveys with multiple industry partners.
Possible Publication Venue: Information and Software Technology Alternative Publication Venue: Euromicro Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications (SEAA)
The preliminary timeline for research in this project is shown in Table 1.
The expected impact of this work is to provide concrete knowledge for the case companies, and other companies, based on the findings of the research. Additionally, this project aims to provide inspiration for all practitioners in similar software engineering teams and serve as recent empirical evidence for the researching community exploring the topic of shifting ways of working in agile software development. [8] R. E. de Souza Santos, P. Ralph, A grounded theory of coordination in remote-first and hybrid software teams, in: Proceedings of the 44th International Conference on Software Engineering, 2022, pp. 25–35. [9] S. Halford, Hybrid workspace: Re-spatialisations of work, organisation and management,
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