Relational Skills in a Large-Scale Agile Software Company How the ability to build relationships affects collaboration across teams in an agile setting

Abstract

This master’s thesis has been carried out at Zenseact and investigated what rela- tional skills is, what relational skills affect the interaction between teams, and how relational skills affect collaboration between teams in a large-scale agile software company. The study set out to answer three research questions and was conducted through 23 interviews and a survey for the engineering department at Zenseact with a 62% response rate, representing 290 people. The results of the study suggest that relational skills is the skills that enable one to create, maintain, utilise relationships. The study implies that relational skills positively affect the interaction between teams, where building trust and communication are the skills affecting the level of interaction the most. Furthermore, relational skills seem to have a positive effect on inter-team collaboration in an agile organisation, where awareness of others and relationships built on trust are important. Lastly, organisational structures seem to either enable or inhibit relational skills and the usability of specific relational skills depends on what situations demand.