COVID-19’s Impact on Agile Software Development

Abstract

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, many agile practitioners had to transition into a remote work environment. Despite remote work not being a new concept for agile software practitioners, the forced or recommended nature of this remote work situation is new. This study investigates this new situation, as well as how agile practitioners have been affected in terms of ways of working. This study uses a mixed method approach consisting of two research phases, of which questionnaire and interview data was collected between February and April 2021. The quanti tative and qualitative data were analyzed through Bayesian analysis and thematic analysis, respectively. The results show that feeling forced to work remotely has a significant impact on different aspects of agile software development (ASD), such as productivity and communication, and that industry practitioners’ employment of agile development and ways of working have primarily been affected by the lack of social interaction and the shift to digital communication. In general, the aspects of ASD that have been the most affected is communication and social interactions. Technical work aspects have not experienced the same changes. The study also suggest that there will be a group maturing debt when teams do go back into office, as digital communication and the lack of psychological safety stand in the way for practitioners’ ability to have sensitive discussions and progress as a team in a remote setting.