Working With Agile Methodologies During The Covid-19 Pandemic : A qualitative study of an agile teams' transition to remote work from home as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic

Abstract: Remote work was already an ongoing trend amongst software developers, but the sudden and unexpected occurrence of the COVID-19 pandemic made it normal due to the obligations for many people to stay and work from home.  To go from the safeness of the work office with an always-working Internet connection and colleagues around to exchange ideas with, to working from home can be a big change from one day to another. Without a good structure or adjustment from the organization, this would lead to a decrease in good work results, communication issues and difficulty for managers to keep track of what is done and by whom. To facilitate this, commonly used methods are the Agile Methodologies. Beck et al. (2001) make it significant in the 12 principles of Agile that the most efficient and effective method of conveying information is by face-to-face conversation for the best results. Investigating the work that was done face-to-face previous to the pandemic but is now done remotely from home within agile teams is therefore of much relevance today. This thesis was intended to investigate and learn how the use of agile methodologies has facilitated the sudden transition to remote work from home and affected the aspects of communication and work results within an agile development team. The study was conducted using the qualitative method with interviews consisting of seven open-response and two closed-response questions with respondents in agile teams from a software development company in Sweden. The analysis was made thematically in relation to Bridge’s Transition Model, and in relation to previous research. The study identified three themes to answer the research question based on the theoretical framework; The Change, Communication and Work Results. The results of the study show that the use of Agile Methodologies indeed has simplified the sudden transition to remote work from home, which was called The Change, as many of the agile practices already were done online previous to the pandemic. The study has also concluded that the use of Agile Methodologies has positively affected the aspects of communication and work results in an agile team, as it was found that forms of communication became more creative as they occurred more frequently while working from home, and it ultimately led to more valuable end-results.