Technology Enabling Collaboration of Agile Development Teams in Hybrid Working : The case of Microsoft Teams

Abstract: Nowadays, the hybrid working model has prevailed as the new working model for many organizations, which combines working remotely and onsite. Although the hybrid working model is not new, the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the transition from traditional working model to hybrid one, which results in greater use of technology, especially for the employees’ collaboration. Collaboration is at the core of agile development team members’ daily hybrid work, and it is achieved through the support of technology tools, such as Microsoft Teams. The hybrid working model, due to its complexity, creates opportunities and challenges to the way agile development team members’ work and collaborate. Therefore, it is important to examine the collaboration of agile development team members that follow the hybrid working model, as well as benefits and challenges that may arise. Thus, this master thesis examines, the technology-supported collaboration of agile development team members, that follow the hybrid working model, taking as an example Microsoft Teams (MS Teams). For this, an interpretive qualitative ethnographic research was conducted. The data was collected through participant observations, focus groups discussions, and semi-structured interviews from purposively selected team members of three agile development teams. The collected data was analyzed thematically and generated six themes. These six themes represent the findings of the master’s thesis research and are interpreted and discussed with the help of the theoretical framework, which includes the concepts of agile project management, computer-supported cooperative work, collaboration, cooperation, coordination, information sharing, communication and hybrid working model.   The research findings show that it is vital for the members of the agile development teams to use a collaboration tool in their daily hybrid work to assure close and frequent collaboration, which in the traditional working model was mainly achieved face-to-face on-site. Their collaboration includes communication, information sharing, and coordination activities, which are supported and facilitated by the technological tool of MS Teams. However, the hybrid working model has given rise to challenges in the collaboration among the agile development team members, which can be overcome if the technological tool of MS Teams is used properly by everyone. This research contributes to the existing knowledge of the informatics research field and the body of research of computer-supported cooperative work by providing a better understanding of how technological tools are used to support collaborating team members that follow the hybrid working model, including benefits and challenges experienced. It also contributes to agile development team members and other practitioners that use MS Teams through improved understanding of aspects that can be taken into consideration for the use of a collaboration technological tool, and the generation of guidelines for such technology in order to make the use of it most efficient.