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Empirical evidence suggests that both autonomy and interdependence are important considerations in team design. But how do interdependence and autonomy affect team cohesiveness, an important antecedent of team performance? The results of this multi-year study with software development projects show that task interdependence and task autonomy have both synergistic and antagonistic impacts on team cohesiveness. At high levels of outcome (goal) interdependence, task autonomy and task interdependence have a synergistic impact on team cohesion, while at low levels of outcome interdependence, task autonomy and task interdependence have an antagonistic impact on team cohesion. Further, taylorist teams showed lower cohesiveness compared to agile teams.

Creation of new knowledge in teams requires collaboration among its team members. Although individual creativity is important, no single individual possesses all the skills and knowledge necessary to deal with complexity in knowledge work. Therefore, team cohesion is considered a prerequisite in innovation. However, in this study we argue that team cohesion could be a double edged sword. It could even be detrimental to innovation at high levels of team cohesion. The findings of this study with 56 software projects quantitatively support this premise. These findings have useful implications for practitioners engaged in knowledge work

Past studies have shown that conflict in teams is inevitable and even desirable for enhancing team performance. Conflict occurs due to perceived or real differences in teams and is often ma...

In this study we view Software Development Methods (SDMs) through the perspective of work design. The objective is to gain understanding into the inherent potential of the two major paradigms of software development, the Plan-driven and Agile methods, to motivate team members of software development projects. The work design perspective is relevant for investigating the motivating impacts of SDMs. The increasing popularity of people focused Agile methods over process focused Plan-driven methods in the 2000s mirror the increasing popularity of non-Taylorist work designs over Taylorist work designs in the 1980s. Work design concepts in parallel disciplines such as manufacturing evolved from the Taylorist focus on specialization and time and motion studies to adopting autonomous self-managed teams and creating employee programs like quality circles. Gleaning concepts from the widely accepted Job Characteristic Model (Hackman and Qldham, 1976) for work design, and the SelfDetermination Theory (Deci and Ryan, 1985), one of the most prominent theories of motivation, provided useful insights. Together they could explain and predict the differential impacts of plandriven and Agile methods of software development on team member motivation.

Self-organization, based on the Socio-Technical Design (STS) work design principles, is considered a hallmark of agile software development (SD) teams and an antecedent of motivation and innovation at work. However, while self-organization is considered a salient success factor in agile SD, past research has shown that there are many hurdles in self-organizing. Yet, the actual level of self-organization practiced in agile teams has not been investigated. In this study we develop a measure to do so using the nine principles of STS work design by Cherns [15]. We found that while the level of self-organization varies across agile projects, on each of the nine dimensions the level of self-organization in agile teams was found to be significantly higher than those using plan-driven methods. Furthermore, self-organization was found to positively affect the motivation and innovativeness of SD teams.

Reflexivity, the extent to which teams reflect upon and modify their functioning, is widely recognized as a key factor influencing performance of work teams. The paper proposes that outcome interdependence, defined as the extent to which team members perceive that attainment of goals by their colleagues will facilitate their own goal achievement, will moderate the effect of team reflexivity on its performance. An empirical study with 332 team members of 34 software projects reveals that as predicted team reflexivity and outcome interdependence have both synergistic and antagonistic impacts on team performance. While high outcome interdependence magnified the positive impacts of team reflexivity on its effectiveness, an increase in team reflexivity at low outcome interdependence had a deleterious impact. However, an opposite effect was observed for team efficiency. Further, agile teams demonstrated higher outcome interdependence and team reflexivity, and thereby higher effectiveness, but lower efficiency, compared to teams adopting plan-drive methods of software development. Finally, in general, agile software development projects performed better than plan driven projects for innovative software development, while projects adopting plan-driven methods performed better than agile projects for routine software development.

Reflexivity, the extent to which teams reflect upon and modify their functioning, is widely considered a key factor for engendering team innovation. In this study, we propose that reflexivity is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for team innovation. Outcome interdependence, defined as the extent to which team members perceive that attainment of goals by their colleagues will facilitate their own goal achievement, and shared team vision, will moderate the effect of team reflexivity on team innovation. An empirical study with 332 team members of 34 software projects reveals that as predicted high outcome interdependence and shared team vision magnified the positive impacts of team reflexivity on team innovation. However, an increase in team reflexivity at low outcome interdependence and shared team vision had a negative impact on team innovation. Further, in general, agile software teams consistently demonstrated higher outcome interdependence and team reflexivity and thereby higher team innovation compared to teams adopting plan-driven methods of software development.