An investigation of agility issues in scrum teams using agility indicators

Agile software development methods have emerged and become increasingly popular in recent years, yet the issues encountered by software development teams that strive to achieve agility using agile methods are yet to be explored systematically. Built upon a previous study that has established a set of indicators of agility, this study investigates what issues are manifested in software development teams using agile methods. It is focused on Scrum teams particularly. In other words, the goal of the paper is to evaluate Scrum teams using agility indicators and therefore to further validate previously presented agility indicators within the additional cases. A multiple case study research method is employed. The findings of the study reveals that the teams using Scrum do not necessarily achieve agility in terms of team autonomy, sharing, stability and embraced uncertainty. The possible reasons include previous organizational plan-driven culture, resistance towards the Scrum roles and changing resources.