203,923 research outputs found
CHARACTERISTICS OF SELF-ORGANIZING TEAMS IN AGILE PROJECT MANAGEMENT: A CASE STUDY
Self-organizing teams, especially in the context of Agile Project Management are subject of interest in business and academia. Agile approach has roots in the IT industry and expending to other fields. One of the most dominant attributes of Agile approach is self-organizing teams. In the literature, self-organizing teams have been studied sine 50s of XX century and can be described by six dimensions: autonomy, communication, learning, team orientation, shared leadership and redundancy. Also, self-organizing agile teams can be characterized by existing informal roles like a mentor, coordinator, translator, promoter, champion, terminator. In the article, the author used a case study method for examining the above characteristics of self-organizing teams. As a result, the existing theoretical models can be useful in diagnosing the state of a self-organizing team. Further studies with more strict research methods are recommended to extend knowledge about the self-organizing team in Agile Project Management.Self-organizing teams, especially in the context of Agile Project Management are subject of interest in business and academia. Agile approach has roots in the IT industry and expending to other fields. One of the most dominant attributes of Agile approach is self-organizing teams. In the literature, self-organizing teams have been studied sine 50s of XX century and can be described by six dimensions: autonomy, communication, learning, team orientation, shared leadership and redundancy. Also, self-organizing agile teams can be characterized by existing informal roles like a mentor, coordinator, translator, promoter, champion, terminator. In the article, the author used a case study method for examining the above characteristics of self-organizing teams. As a result, the existing theoretical models can be useful in diagnosing the state of a self-organizing team. Further studies with more strict research methods are recommended to extend knowledge about the self-organizing team in Agile Project Management
Self-Organizing Agile Teams: A Grounded Theory
Self-organizing teams are a hallmark of Agile software development, directly
a ecting team e ectiveness and project success. Agile software development,
and in particular the Scrum method, emphasizes self-organizing teams but
does not provide clear guidelines on how teams should become and remain
self-organizing. Based on Grounded Theory research involving 58 Agile prac-
titioners from 23 di erent software organizations in New Zealand and In-
dia, this thesis presents a grounded theory of self-organizing Agile teams.
The theory of self-organizing Agile teams explains how software development
teams take on informal, implicit, transient, and spontaneous roles and per-
form balanced practices while facing critical environmental factors, in order
to become self-organizing. The roles are: Mentor, Co-ordinator, Translator,
Champion, Promoter, and Terminator. The practices involve balancing free-
dom and responsibility, cross-functionality and specialization, and continuous
learning and iteration pressure. The factors are senior management support
and level of customer involvement. This thesis will help teams and their
coaches better understand their roles and responsibilities as a self-organizing
Agile team. This thesis will also serve to educate senior management and
customers about the importance of supporting these team
The mediating effect of psychosocial factors in the relationship between self-organizing teams and employee wellbeing : A cross-sectional observational study
Background: Several benefits of working in a self-organizing team, such as higher job satisfaction and better en-gagement to work have been demonstrated in previous studies.Objective: To examine whether those employees working in a self-organizing team have higher job satisfaction and lower turnover intentions compared to those in non-self-organized teams. Further, to test whether psycho-social factors defined by the Job Demand-Control model would function as mediators.Design: A cross-sectional survey study.Setting(s): Home care and assisted living facilities (with 24-h assistance).Participants: Licensed practical nurses (N = 377), registered nurses, therapists and managers (N = 183), and other employees (N = 31) in services for older people.Methods: A survey for employees working in services for older people and who were either in the self-organized teams or in the non-self-organized teams. Data was analyzed using linear regression and mediation analyses.Results: Those employees who worked in a self-organizing team were more satisfied with their job and had lower turnover intentions compared to those in a non-self-organizing team (mean [SD] 3.9 [1.0] vs. 3.7 [1.0], p = 0.006 and 2.2 [1.2] vs. 2.5 [1.3], p = 0.006, respectively). Moreover, job demands and job strain partially mediated the effect of self-organizing teamwork on job satisfaction (Average causal mediation effect [95%CI] 0.09 [0.02-0.15] and 0.10 [0.03-0.18], respectively), as well as on turnover intentions (Average causal mediation effect [95%CI] -0.08 [-0.15 to -0.01] and -0.20 [-0.18 to-0.03], respectively).Conclusions: In the context of older people care services, working in self-organizing teams may enhance employee wellbeing by lowering job demands and job strain, but not by improving job control. Based on the findings of this study, self-organization seems beneficial, however, it requires real autonomy for the teams and team building.Tweetable abstract: Self-organizing teamwork increases job satisfaction and decreases turnover intentions via lower job demands and strain in older people care.(c) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Peer reviewe
Prime movers : mechanochemistry of mitotic kinesins
Mitotic spindles are self-organizing protein machines that harness teams of multiple force generators to drive chromosome segregation. Kinesins are key members of these force-generating teams. Different kinesins walk directionally along dynamic microtubules, anchor, crosslink, align and sort microtubules into polarized bundles, and influence microtubule dynamics by interacting with microtubule tips. The mechanochemical mechanisms of these kinesins are specialized to enable each type to make a specific contribution to spindle self-organization and chromosome segregation
Self-Organizing Teams in Online Work Settings
As the volume and complexity of distributed online work increases, the
collaboration among people who have never worked together in the past is
becoming increasingly necessary. Recent research has proposed algorithms to
maximize the performance of such teams by grouping workers according to a set
of predefined decision criteria. This approach micro-manages workers, who have
no say in the team formation process. Depriving users of control over who they
will work with stifles creativity, causes psychological discomfort and results
in less-than-optimal collaboration results. In this work, we propose an
alternative model, called Self-Organizing Teams (SOTs), which relies on the
crowd of online workers itself to organize into effective teams. Supported but
not guided by an algorithm, SOTs are a new human-centered computational
structure, which enables participants to control, correct and guide the output
of their collaboration as a collective. Experimental results, comparing SOTs to
two benchmarks that do not offer user agency over the collaboration, reveal
that participants in the SOTs condition produce results of higher quality and
report higher teamwork satisfaction. We also find that, similarly to machine
learning-based self-organization, human SOTs exhibit emergent collective
properties, including the presence of an objective function and the tendency to
form more distinct clusters of compatible teammates
Group Maintenance Behaviors in the Decision-Making Styles of Self-Organizing Distributed Teams
Businesses, universities, and other organizations are increasingly reliant on self-organizing, distributed teams which are enabled by information and communication technologies (ICTs). However, inherent geographical, organizational, and social limitations of ICTs challenge the relationships necessary for groups to make effective decisions. Understanding how group maintenance plays out within the context of different styles of decision making may provide insight into social tactics undertaken in such teams. Group maintenance is defined as discretionary, relation-building behavior that enables group members to trust and cooperate with one another more easily [1]. Decision style refers to the extent to which group decision making involves a broad contribution from group members other than leaders. It may range from the most autocratic style where a decision is made by one or a few individuals, to truly collaborative where every member has the opportunity to affect the decision.
This study examines group maintenance within decision-making behaviors of Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) development teams as examples of distributed teams. Most FLOSS software is developed by such teams that are both dynamic and self-organizing, comprised of professionals, users, and other volunteers working in a loosely coupled manner [2-4]. These teams are nearly entirely virtual in that developers contribute from around the world, meet face-to-face infrequently (if at all), and coordinate their activities primarily through computer-mediated communications (CMC) [6, 7]
Autonomous agile teams: Challenges and future directions for research
According to the principles articulated in the agile manifesto, motivated and
empowered software developers relying on technical excellence and simple
designs, create business value by delivering working software to users at
regular short intervals. These principles have spawned many practices. At the
core of these practices is the idea of autonomous, self-managing, or
self-organizing teams whose members work at a pace that sustains their
creativity and productivity. This article summarizes the main challenges faced
when implementing autonomous teams and the topics and research questions that
future research should address
Self-Organizing is not Self-Managing: A Case Study about Governance Challenges in an Agile IT Unit and its Scrum Projects
This paper presents a case study on the internal governance of Scrum projects and their relationships with their organizationâs governance within a rich research setting: an IT agile unit and its mature Scrum project teams. This study reveals ambiguities about the meaning of self-organizing versus self-managing, and the associated challenges for governance processes, especially those related to HR governance, which can lead to unresolved issues and conflicts. Interestingly, these ambiguities are also found in the current IS literature, which rarely differentiates self-organizing from self-managing in agile projects. Thus, this paper enhances our knowledge of governance processes and associated challenges, particularly for mature Scrum project teams, which are still little covered in the IS literature
Exploiting bi-directional self-organising tendencies in team sports: the role of the game model and tactical principles of play
Research has revealed how inherent self-organizing tendencies in athletes and sports teams can be exploited to facilitate emergence of dynamical patterns in synergy formation in sports teams. Here, we discuss how game models, and associated tactical principles of play, may be implemented to constrain co-existing global-to-local and local-to-global self-organization tendencies in team sports players during training and performance. Understanding how to harness the continuous interplay between these co-existing, bi-directional, and coordination tendencies is key to shaping system behaviors in sports training. Training programs are traditionally dominated by designs, which shape the self-organizing tendencies of players and teams at a global-to-local scale by coaches imposing a tactical/strategical plan with associated tactical principles of play. Nevertheless, recent research suggests that performers also need to be provided with opportunities to explore self-organizing tendencies that emerge at the local-to-global scale in training. This directional tendency in synergy formation can be facilitated by players being given opportunities to actively explore different adaptive and innovative performance solutions, coherent with principles of play circumscribed in an overarching game model. Developing methods (coaching sessions rooted on principles of dynamical systems theory that foment the development of such local-to-global relations) to exploit the continuous interplay between these co-existing tendencies within sports teams may promote more effective and efficient athlete skill training programs, in addition to enhancing performance
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