Impact of Covid-19 on Agile Teams in Small and Medium-sized Software Companies

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Impact of Covid-19 on Agile Teams in

Small and Medium-sized Software

Companies

MASTER THESIS WITHIN: General Management NUMBER OF CREDITS: 15 Credits

PROGRAM OF STUDY: Engineering Management AUTHOR: Anton Karlsson & Philip Skötte

TUTOR: Tommaso Minola JÖNKÖPING May 2021

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Acknowledgement

When writing this Master thesis, help and support has been provided by our supervisor Tommaso Minola and we want to express our full gratitude. We want to give a special thanks to all the respondents for giving us their time. It is thanks to you and all the knowledge you shared with us that made this study possible. Finally, we want to thank our wonderful seminar group for all the interesting meetings and feedback.

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Abstract

The Covid-19 situation has changed the work environment for a lot of companies in Sweden. Due to restrictions from Sweden's health care association, people have been working from home to as large extent as possible. Even though the work environment in the software industry was started to be digitized before Covid-19, it has been a huge readjustment for the employees. The software industry has been selected for this study for its significant importance for the BNP in Sweden. SMEs have been selected to cover as large a portion of the companies as possible. This study goes through how Covid-19 has affected the agile way of working within agile teams in software SMEs. To do this investigation, a grounded theory approach with qualitative interviews from 11 different software companies, and 13 participants has been made. The analysis of the study resulted in six main impacts that Covid-19 has had on agile teams in the software SMEs: Communication, Structure, Motivation, Health, Relationship, and Responsibility.

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3 Methodology 14 3.1 Research Philosophy 14 3.1.1 Ontology 14 3.1.2 Epistemology 15 3.2 Research Approach 15 3.3 Research Method 16 3.4 Research Strategy 17 3.5 Research Process 17 3.6 Data gathering 18 3.6.1 Secondary data 18 3.6.2 Primary data 19 3.7 Data Analysis 21 3.8 Research Quality 23 3.9 Ethical Considerations 24 4 Results 25

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4.1 Communication 25

4.1.1 Internal communication within agile teams 25

4.1.1.1 Formal meetings 25

4.1.1.2 Informal meetings 27

4.1.2 Internal communication among agile teams 29

4.2 Structure 30 4.2.1 Working structure 30 4.2.2 E-meeting structure 31 4.3 Motivation 33 4.4 Health 35 4.5 Relationships 37 4.6 Responsibility 39

5 Discussion & Conclusion 41

5.1 Communication & Relationship 41

5.2 Structure & Responsibility 43

5.3 Health & Motivation 45

5.4 Limitations 46

5.5 Future Research 47

6 References 48

Appendix 53

Appendix A - Interview questions 53

Appendix B - Glossary 56

Appendix C – Codes linked with categories 57

Figures

FIGURE 1. COMPANY DISTRIBUTION IN SWEDEN 11

FIGURE 2. ICT INDUSTRY PERCENTAGE OF IMPACT ON BNP 12

FIGURE 3. RESEARCH PROCESS 18

FIGURE 4. THE ROLE DISTRIBUTION OF THE 13 INTERVIEWEES 19

Tables

TABLE 1. VALUES AND PRINCIPLES OF AGILE DEVELOPMENT 7

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1 Introduction

1.1 Background

In March 2020, the whole world was forced to make drastic changes. This affected both businesses and personal behaviors, to follow the restrictions due to what happened some months earlier in December 2019 in Wuhan City, Hubei province in China. A person was found affected by a new kind of virus the world had never seen before, the Covid-19 virus (Huang et al., 2020; Guan et al., 2020). The first cases of the virus had connections with a wholesale food market, where it was spread between visitors, stall owners and market employees (World Health Organization, 2020).

One of the recommendations from Sweden’s public health authorities was that companies should let their employees work from home as much as possible (Folkhälsomyndigheten, 2020). The restrictions led to a reduction of consumption in local shops, which led to a lot of declared bankrupt stores. The restrictions also led to a reduction of import/export of products in most industries (Vidya & Prabheesh, 2020). However, the digitalization of work environments had to evolve at tremendous speed for businesses to survive whilst working from home. This development gave the software industry a big boost, due to an increase in the demand of remote-working capabilities (Abu-Rayash & Dincer, 2020).

The digitalization of work environments was already in progress before the pandemic. However, due to the restrictions, an increasing focus on development has been made. This has led to an inconvenience for companies because they were forced into changes before they were ready for it. Interactive meetings have changed into meetings at digital platforms such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet (Hacker, 2020).

The pandemic Covid-19 is not the first time companies in the software industry are facing drastic changes. In the 1960s the software industry was facing a crisis, often referred to as “the software crisis” (Booch, 2018). The software crisis emerged due to increasing complexity of software development, which led to projects always being over budget, behind schedule and unreliable. To face these issues and to decrease the number of projects failing, it was recognized that the techniques for software development were inadequate, and these techniques must be updated to a more methodological way of

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working. In this time period, programming was declared as a discipline more than a craft and programming became more structured. As a result of new ideas and to face the crises, structured programming languages emerged (Wirth, 2008). Even though action attempts, such as developing new high-level object-oriented languages and methodology development, to overcome the software crisis, the crisis stretches into the end of the 20 century (Glass, 1994). The frustration of the never-ending crisis led to the Snowball Convention in Utah, 2001. In this meeting, 17 representatives from different heavyweight software development processes were gathered to put an end to the crisis once and for all, the creation of The Agile Manifesto.

The representatives in the meeting were responding to the problems managing software projects using the linear “Waterfall method”. They agreed that for projects to be more successful, the focus shall lay on iterations and customer collaborations (Pope-Ruark, 2015; Beck et al., 2001).

The agile manifesto contains four key values and twelve principles, where one of the principles are directly affected by the pandemic Covid-19, “The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.” (Beck et al., 2001). In today's environment, companies are working from home to as large extent as possible, and the meetings are held online.

1.2 Research Problem

Sweden's public health authorities have recommended that as many as possible shall be working from home due to Covid-19 to reduce the spread of infection (Folkhälsomyndigheten, 2020). This has forced most of the software companies to adjust their way of working to maintain their productivity.

Software companies are commonly using the agile way of working. The methodologies are created to be open for change and to be effective when it comes to deliveries, time-estimation, team-collaboration, and communication. The Agile Manifesto explains that face-to-face conversations is the most efficient method for conveying information (Beck et al., 2001).

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The goal of the research is to investigate how Covid-19 has affected the situation for agile teams in software SMEs and investigate how or if the agile way of working has been changed.

1.3 Research Purpose & Research Questions

Covid-19 has forced people and companies to adapt themselves to follow the recommendations from Sweden's public health authorities. The research purpose is to give a clear perspective on how Covid-19 has affected the agile teams within software companies. Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SME) in the software industry constitutes 99.9% of the companies in Sweden. To cover as large a number of companies as possible, the focus will be on software SMEs. Therefore, the following research question has been established to fill the gap in this unexplored subject:

● How have Covid-19 affected the agile way of working within agile teams in Software SMEs?

1.4 Delimitations

This research will only be considering software SMEs which leads to exclusion of larger companies. The research will not take companies which are not using agile methods into consideration. The research will only be including companies which have let the employees work from home due to Covid-19.

There are various tools for measuring agileness, such as Team Agility Assessment (TAA), Perceptive Agile Measurement (PAM), and Objective Principles Strategies (OPS) (Chronis & Gren, 2016). Even though there are tools for measuring agileness, this is something that will not be covered in this research.

This study will only consider the impact of Covid-19 on the agile software development team in Sweden.

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2 Theoretical Background

To understand the fundamentals of this research, a theoretical background is crucial to get base knowledge about the subject. The background information covered by this chapter is: Agile Development; Teams; Leadership; Types of organizations in Sweden; Covid-19’s effect on the business; Electronic Meeting System (EMS).

2.1 Team

What is the difference between a group and a team? A collection of people who coordinate their individual effort is defined as a group, a team on the other hand is defined differently. A team is defined as a group of people who work together to achieve a specific goal (Ghaye, 2005). However, to get a clearer picture of what a “team” stands for, it can be subordinated into criterions and those are: a) a team is consisted of two or more individuals, b) a team shares the desire of a common goal, c) a team interact socially, d) a team exist to do organizationally tasks, e) a team consist of different roles and responsibilities, f) a team exhibit interdependencies regarding goals, workflow and outcomes, and g) a team is together embedded in an organizational context with boundaries and connections to a broader task environment (Kozlowski & Bell, 2003).

2.2 Leadership

A leader can be defined in several different ways. Attributes that reflect a typical leader are for example being the voice of a group of people, helping a group work in the right direction or implementing structure for a group to follow. Different situations require different kinds of leadership (Khan, 2015).

Intelligence quotient and competence are often seen as the most important attributes for becoming a good leader, but not according to Goleman (2014). A good leader is those who leave the most positive impression in their work environments, and this is based on a high degree of emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence consists of five different components, and these are self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skill.

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Having an understanding over one’s strengths, weaknesses, needs, drives and emotions is self-awareness. Leaders with strong self-awareness are honest to both themselves and others and do not create unrealistic goals (Goleman, 2014).

Sometimes it is easy for emotions to have an impact on behavior. Having a bad mood could result in a leader behaving in foolish, illogical, or even destructive ways (Baumeister et al., 2007). Self-regulation is about how to control these emotions and even find ways to take advantage of different emotions (Goleman, 2014).

One thing that is essential for becoming a good leader is motivation. Both motivate oneself as a leader, but also motivate others. A leader shall always create clear goals for the whole team. Clear goals create motivation for the team members because achievement is the key factor of motivation (Goleman, 2014).

In the business world, it is more common that the boss highlight flaws instead of praising the team members. Having empathy and understanding why and how the people around feel about decisions and tasks can be a key factor in how a team performs (Goleman, 2014).

Social skill is the last component in emotional intelligence. Leaders with high social skills are more compatible to gain followers. Creating relationships and shared feelings with people helps the leader increase the team members productivity. People are more likely to say yes to someone they have a relationship with (Goleman, 2014).

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2.3 Agile Development

Agile methods as a working process goes back to the Snowball convention, in Utah 2001. To put an end to the software crisis, and with one specific reason at hand, the meeting emerged. The task was to create new software that satisfies the customer’s needs. The representatives from the convention agreed that the creation of new software shall be based on customer collaboration, teamwork, iterative development, and response to change (Beck et al., 2001; Rico David et al., 2009). There are various methods that count as an agile method, but they are all working towards solving the same issues. Some of the problems that agile methods are trying to solve is: how to innovate, manage product-development, and ensure quality (Rico David et al., 2009). By working iteratively, agile methods bring software to the market continuously in a cost-efficient manner.

The Agile Manifesto consists of four key values and twelve principles for agile development. The four key values have emerged from one basic reason: “We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it.” (Beck et al., 2001), and gives the businesses the opportunity to strive for excellence. In addition to the key values, the Agile Manifesto provides principles to follow. These principles are a form of a guideline to achieve success in a software project. The key values and principles are shown in Table 1.

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Table 1. Values and Principles of Agile Development (Beck et al., 2001).

There are several different methods that work with agile development such as: Dynamic Software Development Method (DSDM); Feature Driven Development (FDD); Adaptive Software Development (ASD). However, the most common methods used are Scrum and eXtreme Programming (XP) (Hoda et al., 2013).

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8 2.3.1 Agile Team

In most of the development projects, the information systems are too large for being developed by a single person. Therefore, the software developers are collaborating in a software team. Software development teams most often follow agile practices and are therefore called agile teams. Schmidt (2016) explains that the three most popular topics when researching agile teams are: team communication, team coordination, and team cognition. In team communication, the subject of social agile practices is being proposed to get better communication within the team. Better communication leads to better understanding, and relationships which in turn leads to project success. The subject of team coordination is to determine the performance of the team. Schmidt (2016) explains it as: “a comprehensive understanding of the project goal, the project priorities, what is going on and when, what they as individuals need to do and when, who is doing what, and how each individual's work fits in with other team members' work”. The subject of team cognition is about distribution of knowledge and sharing knowledge among the team.

2.3.2 Agile Leadership

To make it possible to give simple guidance instead of rigid instructions, the agile leader needs to be flexible. According to Parker, Holesgrove & Pathak (2015), an ideal agile leader shall follow the criterions such as setting directions, establishing the simple generative rules of the system, encouraging constant feedback, adaptation, and collaboration. This forms the basis of agile leadership.

2.3.3 Scrum

Scrum is one of the most used methods in agile development. According to Vanderjack (2015), the top reasons for that is: Retrospective every 2 to 4 weeks; The requirements (User stories) are prioritized; Change request in the middle of a project is no harder to face than the initial requirements; There is no fear of trying out new things, with potential failure; Creates the requirements of the project together with the Product Owner.

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9 2.3.3.1 Roles within Scrum

In an agile Scrum team, there are three major roles: Product Owner, Scrum Master and Development Team Member. The team consists of five to nine members, and both the Product Owner and the Scrum Master is playing a leadership role (Vanderjack, 2015).

The Scrum Master is a leader with main tasks to guide and serve. This means that they do not tell the development team what to do, but rather the members request what to do. The Scrum Master’s primary role is to make sure that the agile process runs smoothly, and the Ceremonies are scheduled, lead, and executed correctly (Vanderjack, 2015).

The Product Owner is the one that “owns” the project. This means that the Product Owner is the person that prioritizes, improves, changes, or adds new functionality to User Stories. The role also includes close contact with the end user(s) and collaborates with other agile Scrum teams (Vanderjack, 2015).

The development members primary assignment is to subordinate the User Stories into tasks, do time-estimation, develop, and present them at the Retrospective. They also attend any Ceremony that they are expected at, such as the Daily Scrum (Vanderjack, 2015).

The Ceremonies, User Stories, Daily Scrum and Retrospective is explained in Appendix B.

2.3.4 eXtreme Programming

EXtreme Programming (XP) is a system development methodology created by Kent Beck. Beck is one of the members of the agile alliance, which created the agile manifesto (Beck et al., 2001). In addition to the key values and principles in the agile manifesto, XP has both values and practices of their own. The five values in XP are: Communication; Simplicity; Feedback; Courage; Respect (Wells, 2013). There are also 12 principles that support these values. Wake (2002) has categorized these principles as followed (Note that there is some overlap between the practices):

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● Team practices: Collective ownership, continuous integration, metaphor, coding standards, 40-hour week, pair programming, small releases.

● Process: On-site customer, testing, small releases, planning game.

The development in XP is slightly different from other agile methodologies. The developers are working with test-driven development, which means that they create tests of the code, before the actual program. After they have created the program, they run the test and make sure it succeeded. When everything works, they do refactoring of the code. The refactoring means that the developers re-write the code to make it more readable for other developers (Wake, 2002).

XP is a team-oriented practice that has a lot of focus on pair programming. This is to do a review of each other's codes in real time and solve problems easier. The methodology also emphasizes iterative work and focuses on delivering small releases (Wake, 2002).

2.3.4.1 Roles within XP

There are generally four roles in XP: Developer (Programmer), Customer, Manager (Tracker), and Coach.

● Developer (Programmer) - Create tests, write code, and refactor the code. ● Customer - Developing an attitude for success of the project, writing user stories

and making/changing decisions.

● Manager (Tracker) - Tracking defects in the tests/code, defines, monitors, and explains the planning for the developers. The Manager also schedules and holds the meetings.

● Coach - Always ready to help the developers, having in-depth understanding of the project and making sure that the team is self-reliant.

2.3.5 Key Success Factors for Agile Development

From a manager’s point of view, the success factors for agile development are time, cost, scope, and quality. However, the critical success factors for having a successful team lies

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in making sure that the team is satisfied and motivated at work. Chow & Cao (2008) explains six success factors for agile development: Delivery strategy, Agile software engineering techniques, Team capability, Project management process, Team environment, and Customer involvement. All these success factors are linked with the time, cost, scope, and quality.

2.4 Types of Organizations in Sweden

The criteria in Sweden which decides if an enterprise is small or medium sized, depends on how many employees the company has. According to Persson (2020), a small sized enterprise is 0 to 49 employees, while a medium sized enterprise is 50 to 249 employees. If the company has an even bigger number of employees, it is declared as a large enterprise. In Sweden, approximately 1,2 million companies exist, and the large enterprises are only constituting one per mille of these. However, large enterprises still have approximately 40 percent of the total turnover of the companies in Sweden. SMEs form the rest of the remaining 99,9 percent and stand for the remaining 60 percent of the turnover in Sweden as can be seen in Figure 1 (Persson, 2020).

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12 2.4.1 Software companies in Sweden

Software companies' industry name is called Information and Communication Technology (ICT) industry. There are 47 117 companies within the ICT industry in Sweden, where 47 048 of these companies are SMEs (AllaBolag, 2021). This results in a percentage of 99.9%, which means that the software industry follows the overall sizes of organizations in Sweden. When comparing this number with the total number of companies, the ICT industry consists of 3,9 percent. However, the ICT industry has a significant impact on the BNP in Sweden. BNP in Sweden consists of 4952 Billion SEK, and the ICT industry consists of 348 Billion SEK, which is 7 percent of the total BNP, as shown in Figure 2 (Holmström, 2021).

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2.5 Covid-19 effects on the business

Covid-19 has affected all businesses in different ways. Some industries have had enormous financial pressure, while others have thrived by the pandemic. Donthu & Gustafsson (2020) explained that industries such as hotel, flight, tourism, general and personal services, as well as expos, conferences and other large gatherings have been deeply affected by Covid-19. The article continues describing that digitized industries such as online entertainment, food delivery, online shopping and solutions for remote work have really thrived by the pandemic. Because of the pandemic, it is very likely that countries will become more nationalistic. This is a consequence of companies rethinking their supply chain, moving their business back to the home country.

2.6 Electronic Meeting Systems

EMS, short for Electronic Meeting Systems, is a term coined by Dennis et al., (1988), a web- or platform application that allows communication focused meetings online. The utilization of EMS is an effect of managers and professionals spending 40-70% of their time in meetings, and the meetings are most often not very effective (Alavi, 1993). EMS systems are a helping tool to enhance work group processes and outcomes (Kahai et al., 1997). It is also used to minimize travel costs, increase participation, and increase availability for participants. The increased utilization of EMS in today's environment in Sweden is however since people shall work from home to as large extent as possible (Folkhälsomyndigheten, 2020). Even though there are many positive effects of EMS, such as cost savings and widening participation, there are some negative aspects as well. EMS is heavily dependent on stable internet connection, and the overall human interaction. Only 7% of the overall communication is through words, 38% is through vocal signals and 55% is through body language (Burden & Savin-Baden, 2019). This means that the overall understanding of each other through EMS is much harder than face-to-face communication.

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3 Methodology

The methodology is necessary because it provides an insight of the author's beliefs, views and values that justifies the different choices made for tackling the research question. It also shows how the study can be reproducible and makes sure for the reader that the study is constructed in a proper way.

3.1 Research Philosophy

“When we study leadership in organizations, to what extent is our research shaped by our own experiences with authority? How can we know whether an observed action amounts to leadership?” (Easterby-Smith et al., 2018). Having the understatement about the philosophical roots as a researcher is critical for producing a clear research method. How to look at a specific phenomenon and understand the collected, analyzed and used data describes research philosophy. To decide the approach of ontological and epistemological assumptions is always a debate between philosophers.

3.1.1 Ontology

Ontology is about the nature of reality and existence and the starting point of debates between philosophers is when it comes to the four ontological positions. The four ontological positions refer to the reality the researcher has of their study, and these are realism, internal realism, relativism, and nominalism. Realism could be described as “the God's eye”, where the mindset is that there exists one reality and we have direct access to it. Internal realism represents the same as realism does, but individuals have indirect access to reality. Relativism on the other hand, is about the reality we are living in depending on every individual's perspective. The fourth ontological position is nominalism which represents idealism, describing the mindset that language and discourse is the creator of social reality. The nature of this research is based on relativistic ontology since the impact of Covid-19 on agile teams can have multiple effects on different companies. To face this, relativism is a suitable philosophical approach, where multiple realities are necessary for conducting the data (Easterby-Smith et al., 2018).

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15 3.1.2 Epistemology

Epistemology is about philosophical knowledge, questioning what it is, and how it is acquired. Epistemology can be viewed in two different contrasting scientific ways, positivism, and social constructionism. Positivism represents the idea that the social world exists externally, and objective methods are to be used to measure reality. Social constructionism represents the idea of reality which is determined by interpretation and imagination within people. This is a result of shared assumptions of reality by several individuals. This research was based on constructivist epistemology, since the primary source for collecting data was through qualitative interviews. Interpretation of comparison and triangulation interviews resulted in theory generation, which is the foundation of constructivist epistemology (Easterby-Smith et al., 2018).

3.2 Research Approach

There are three different research approaches when researching a specific topic: abductive, deductive, and inductive research.

The abductive approach is the process of generating social scientific evidence from social actors. The aim for abductive research is to construct theories that are grounded in everyday activities, language and meanings that are expressed by social actors (Ong, 2012). It is mainly used in research where the field is not thoroughly researched and there are uncertainties in the field.

The deductive approach lays its ground in pre-existing literature, and then creates hypotheses from the literature. The hypotheses that emerge will then be tested with data. The approach is mainly used in thoroughly researched areas, and alongside quantitative research (Blackstone, 2012).

The inductive approach takes the steps from the deductive approach described earlier and reverses the order. Inductive research starts by collecting relevant data to the subject. When data is collected, the researchers form patterns from the data and then develop a theory to explain the formed patterns (Blackstone, 2012).

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The authors consider that the inductive approach is the most appropriate because the research will first find what differs in the agile process before and during Covid-19. The factors found in the investigation can then be tested by theory. Starting with the data collection will give the authors in-depth knowledge in agile-management, and thereafter give value by forming a theory based on the findings.

3.3 Research Method

This chapter provides an explanation for the choice of method, and a short explanation of the different choices. Firstly, it must be determined if a qualitative or a quantitative approach is most beneficial for answering the research question.

When a study is focusing on representing numbers and graphs, a quantitative approach is suitable. Experiments, observations with numbers and structured interviews questions are common for this approach. Quantitative approach is the best choice when it comes to reviewing large samples of data and reviewing the samples through statistical analysis. However, the quantitative approach has a downside to being inflexible and is not a great choice when it comes to understanding processes that rely on people's behaviors (Easterby-Smith et al., 2018).

Qualitative approach, on the other hand, is used when the researcher wants to express the result in words. Qualitative approaches give a deeper insight in group or individuals behaviors. The most common way of getting this is with the help of qualitative interviews and are defined as “qualitative interviews offer ways by which rich and detailed information can be gathered from respondents to reveal aspects of their lives, understandings or experience. “(Easterby-Smith et al., 2018). Another definition of qualitative interviews is when someone is having a conversation and the discussion is based around a question regarding a specific topic (Lofland & Lofland, 1984).

For this research, a qualitative approach is most beneficial, because it gives an in-depth explanation of how the work process differs before and during the pandemic.

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3.4 Research Strategy

There are several strategies of forming a qualitative study that could be used: Observational research, Interactive participatory research, Action research, Archival research, Ethnographic research, Narrative research, Grounded theory, and Case study (Easterby-Smith et al., 2018).

The Grounded theory is a comparative method, which is looking into the same processes in different situations. Example for grounded theory is when a researcher wants to do interviews in different organizations for different managers and investigate how performance has been compared to previous years. This example provides an explanation of the choice of method in this study, where a comparison how teams manage to use an agile way of working before and during the pandemic (Easterby-Smith et al., 2018). Grounded theory is the wider approach when conducting qualitative research. It has been decided by the authors to interview multiple companies within the software industry to have diversity in the results.

3.5 Research Process

The research process initiated with identifying a problem. Regarding the problem Covid-19 has caused around the world, it also creates many unexplored research subjects. By searching, reviewing literature and course literature, a research problem could be created with a suitable research approach. The sample of companies were based on criterions that makes the results from the companies significant. The criterions were that the companies must be software SMEs, that they are working from home, and work with agile methods. After the selection of the companies based on the criterions, another criteria was created for deciding which positions that was relevant for the interviews. This criterion was that the persons interviewed had to be part of an agile team. When the appointments were booked with agile team members, questions were prepared carefully to make the answers as informative as possible. When all the interviews were done, it was time for analyzing, comparing, and processing the data. The patterns found in the analysis were explained by literature, which led to a conclusion of the research. Documentation was done

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continuously through the whole research. The general steps of the process are shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Research process (Own creation).

3.6 Data gathering

The data collected for this research is divided into secondary and primary data.

3.6.1 Secondary data

The secondary data gathering for the research has consisted of peer-reviewed journals, books, and information from the public health authorities. This was to achieve the base knowledge for the research and for developing the interviews. To collect the articles, various search engines have been used. The primary sources for collecting articles have been through the library of Jönköping University, Primo, and Google scholar. Keywords were used on these search engines to find relevant articles for this research.

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19 3.6.2 Primary data

The primary data collected for this research is through semi-structured interviews held on multiple companies within the software industry. The semi-structured approach together with pre-created open-ended questions allows the interviewee to share maximum information. An interview plan was conducted before the interviews to prepare the questions, when the interviews were held, and which EMS platform the interview was held at.

Sampling

To gather the data needed to answer the research question, 11 software companies participated in the study. From these 11 companies, 13 persons were interviewed, and the role distribution is shown in Figure 4. The interviews consisted of 34 questions and every interview was estimated to take approximately 60 minutes. The meetings with the agile team members were held online, with the help of the electronic meeting program Zoom or Microsoft Teams.

Figure 4. The role distribution of the 13 interviewees (Own creation).

Snowball Sampling

Snowball sampling is a method used to find more participants in a study. The interviewers are asking participants in the study that meet the criterions for inclusion if they are aware of someone who could be included. By using this method, it becomes easier to find more participants that meet the criteria for inclusion (Easterby-Smith et al., 2018). Two of the participants of the study were found through snowball sampling, and the remaining participants were found from LinkedIn and AllaBolag.

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20 Interviews

There are three different types of interviews: structured, semi-structured and unstructured. Structured interview means that all the questions are prepared beforehand and that the researchers will not ask any other questions not prepared for. This means that there will be no follow-up questions asked. Structured interviews are often used in market research, where the interviewer asks a series of predefined questions in a predefined order. The interviews coordinated in a structured way gives quantitative data.

Semi-structured interviews means that there are a series of questions that are predefined, but the interviewee can ask follow-up questions. Less structured interviews are appropriate to use when the goal for the interviewee is to understand the respondent’s world, and their opinions.

The goal for unstructured interviews is the same as for semi-structured, but unstructured interviews are more of a conversation. There are no prepared questions in no specific order. Both semi-structured and unstructured interviews gather qualitative data.

To gather data for this research, semi-structured interviews will be used. The reason for this is that semi-structured interviews are the best choice for getting in-depth information, and the follow up questions will be a great tool for that. Unstructured interviews are impossible to prepare for. This is not an option because the interviews for this research must be prepared to some extent beforehand.

The interviews will be held by two researchers. One of the researchers will be focusing on asking the questions and come up with follow-up questions. The other researcher will have a more passive role, taking notes, analyzing the answers, but also interrupting the interview if they go off topic. Before each interview, the researchers will ask for permission to record the interviews, so that the researchers then can re-listen and transcribe the interviews.

The interview questions were conducted based on the research purpose, so that the responses at turn can answer the research question.

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3.7 Data Analysis

A way of analyzing qualitative data from interviews that is strongly linked to grounded theory is grounded analysis. The process shares some techniques with content analysis but is used in different ways, and grounded analysis is a more open approach. The aim of grounded theory is not to elaborate existing data, but to build theory through the data identified from the analysis. The reason why grounded theory is seen as a more open approach is that the process compares different collected data segments from the interviews. Content analysis however is comparing the data segments with pre-existing literature. This makes grounded analysis more open to new discoveries (Easterby-Smith et al., 2018).

Because research about the impact due to the pandemic Covid-19 is limited, grounded analysis seemed the obvious choice to find new discoveries. The process allows the authors to be creative at the same time as it contributes with elaborated findings.

Grounded analysis is a seven-step process with the categories: Familiarization, Reflection, Open coding, Conceptualization, Focused re-coding, Linking, Re-evaluation. By following this process, the authors will be able to estimate the time for each step, which helps them keep on track, as well as help them stay structured during the analysis phase. The process that is followed is described in Easterby-Smith et al., (2018). The codes linked with the categories of this study can by shown in Appendix C.

Familiarization

The first step is to get familiarized with the data, not only the transcript from the interviews, but also unrecorded data such as drawings, notes etc. While getting familiar with the data, the authors shall remind themselves about the objective of the research, to make sure that the processing of the data is pursued in the right direction. To ensure that the data collected from the respondents is not biased, the relationship between the interviewee and the respondents should be accounted for.

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Reflection

The reflection phase is about making sense of the gathered data. The data must be evaluated by comparing it to previous research to get a sense of what data that is the most important and how the data can contribute to new findings.

Open coding

In the open coding phase, the messy data gathered from the interviews will be linked with each other creating categories. To do this, codes must be created. Codes are descriptive labels of the segments in the transcript, meaning that it summarizes the purpose of data segments.

Conceptualization

The conceptualization phase means that the codes shall be organized into categories to discover patterns among the codes. By doing this, the authors can in turn identify concepts and themes out of these categories. These are related to what is going to be solved. The book by Easterby-Smith et al., (2018) says that the codes shall be categorized by similarity, difference, frequency, sequence, correspondence, or causation.

Focused re-coding

The focused re-coding phase is about creating codes which describe a more in-depth analysis of what is deemed important. The process of creating focused codes is highly iterative because the researchers must go back to the transcript iteratively to identify particular properties.

Linking

At this point, a first draft of the results can be created. This draft will in turn be presented to colleagues and respondents so that the results can be verified. This is to make sure that the researchers have understood the data correctly.

Re-evaluation

When the constructive feedback is collected from colleagues and respondents, the researchers may feel that some areas need more work. This phase allows the researchers to put in more work where it is needed.

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3.8 Research Quality

For the authors to ensure quality in this research, four general rules for establishing trustworthiness conducted by Nowell (2017) shall be followed: credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability.

Credibility

Credibility means that the researcher has addressed what the respondents have said and represents those facts in the findings. There are several techniques to make sure that the research has credibility such as prolonged engagement, persistent observation, data collection triangulation, and researcher triangulation. Credibility can also be stronger if the researchers have external checks on the articles and raw materials (Nowell, 2017). The authors will focus on data collection triangulation, and external checks on articles and raw materials to ensure credibility.

Transferability

Transferability refers to which extent the research can be reproduced by another researcher. To make sure that the research is transferable, the researchers shall have clear instructions on their course of action (Nowell, 2017). To ensure transferability, the authors constructed a literature review that gave them the necessary information to craft interview questions and form a theory based on the comparison between data collection and literature.

Dependability

For the research to have dependability, the researchers must make sure that the research process is logical, traceable, and clearly documented (Nowell, 2017). By following the time schedule and keeping track of every step in the research process, the authors can ensure dependability.

Confirmability

Confirmability is achieved only when credibility, transferability, and dependability is achieved. It refers to that the result is clearly derived from the data and the researchers shall clearly demonstrate how they achieved that (Nowell, 2017).

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3.9 Ethical Considerations

Bell & Bryman (2017) is mentioning that there exist key principles to ensure research ethics and while doing this research, these have been taken into consideration. These principles can be shown in Table 2:

1. Ensuring no harm comes to participants. 2. Respecting the dignity of research participants. 3. Ensuring a fully informed consent of research participants.

4. Protecting the privacy of research participants. 5. Ensuring the confidentiality of research data. 6. Protecting the anonymity of individuals or organizations. 7. Avoiding deception about the nature of aims of the research. 8. Declaration of affiliations, funding sources, and conflicts of interest.

9. Honesty and transparency in communicating about the research. 10. Avoidance of any misleading or false reporting of research findings.

Table 2. Key principles in research ethics (Bell & Bryman, 2017).

To ensure the research ethics criterions mentioned in Table 2 was fulfilled, the interviews were carefully prepared. Each interview started off by explaining the purpose of the study, what stage the research is in at that moment and how the research will use the data collected from each interview. Confidentiality and anonymity of each respondent was ensured by the researchers. Contact information about the researchers was given to the respondents if any questions or concerns would appear.

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4 Results

This chapter will go through the different findings gathered from the interviews. The chapter is divided into six key impacts on agile teams in software SMEs due to Covid-19: Communication, Structure, Motivation, Health, Relationships, and Responsibility.

4.1 Communication

“The most effective way in general is always to meet face-to-face. You will never get away from that, but then you have to try imitating it through e-meeting. I think the most effective way is to actually talk to individuals in almost any situation. Then following up

with written communication afterwards to confirm the information is probably the absolute best.” - Anonymous interviewee.

One of the main findings from the interviews was how the communication has been affected by Covid-19. Although many different attempts have been made to imitate face-to-face communication, no one of the participants have found a more effective way of communication. The findings will differentiate internal communication within teams, as well as amongst teams.

4.1.1 Internal communication within agile teams

The internal communication has been divided into formal and informal meetings. The formal meetings can be explained as meetings that are recurrent and are planned beforehand. Informal meetings are the short meetings the employees must get social interaction, ask simple questions and/or continuous meetings such as pair/mob programming.

4.1.1.1 Formal meetings

The formal meetings that are the most frequently recurrent are the daily stand-ups, sprint planning sessions, retrospective, and internal demo sessions of new software releases. Most of these meetings were performed in face-to-face interaction before Covid-19, whilst during Covid-19 these formal meetings have been performed online through EMS.

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The negative impact on the relocation of formal meetings into EMS found from the respondents has been the following:

Make your voice heard

In meetings that are held online, it is much harder to get the feeling that someone wants to take over in the meeting and talk. This together with the fact that everyone is muted when someone is talking, makes it hard to get your voice heard. In many cases, the meeting has already moved forward into a new subject before you have got the chance to speak.

Interruption

This point is linked with the previous impact stated. To make your voice heard, the meeting participants need to interrupt each other, trying to do it as you do in a face-to-face meeting. However, this does not work that good in EMS. This problem has arisen most frequently in companies that were not that digitized before Covid-19.

Misunderstanding

It has been a problem in several of the interviewed companies that the participants in meetings misunderstand decisions, information and in some cases, directives. These misunderstandings can have big consequences on, for example, new requirements from the customer, spending a lot of time developing something unnecessary.

However, there have been some positive impacts as well on the formal meetings due to the relocation:

Performance

Talking in front of a big audience is something that not all people are comfortable with. Having meetings online through EMS has made it much easier for people to speak naturally in front of a big group of people.

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This point is connected to the negative impacts stated previously. In a face-to-face meeting, and even on an unstructured online meeting, the one who speaks often get interrupted in the middle of a sentence. However, the meeting participants in most of the companies interviewed have become very good at respecting who is talking. This is linked to the fact that every person's opinion matter, which is very important in agile methods, and has resulted in an improvement since Covid-19.

Follow-up communication

To prevent misunderstanding from meetings, the hosts of the meetings have become much better at having up communication after the formal meetings. The follow-up communication can be in the form of email, online meeting, or phone call, but email is most frequently used for this. Having documentation of what is said in meetings decreases the number of informal meetings and saves a lot of time.

4.1.1.2 Informal meetings

The informal meetings that are most frequently recurrent is when someone in the team has a simple question and continues meetings such as pair/mob programming. The informal meetings were most often performed face-to-face at an office before Covid-19, while now they are all performed online through EMS, e-mail, or phone calls.

The negative impacts on informal meetings due to Covid-19, according to the interviews is:

Ask a simple question

Asking a simple question can take a lot of time because of schedule meetings with whom the question is for. This has affected the junior developer the most because they have the most questions and need support. This, in difference to asking a simple question to someone sitting next to you, is very time consuming.

Requires more communication

For the employees to be motivated and effective at work, there is a need for communication. However, not being able to have face-to-face communication, and seeing

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each other's work has created a need for communicating even more than before Covid-19. This is not a negative factor in that sense, but it is more time consuming than before, which affects the effectiveness at work.

Availability

Another time-consuming factor is that it is hard to know if someone is at the computer or not. Often in software companies, the employees are working flex hours, which means that they can take a long break in the middle of the day to work out, go for dinner, etc. In comparison to when someone is working in the office where you can see if the person is there or not, this can affect the effectiveness and the employees can get frustrated.

The positive impact on the informal meetings, according to the respondents has been:

Teamwork

Both pair and mob programming are working methods where two (pair) or more (mob) are working together on the same computer. Covid-19 has made this working method a little bit different than before. Now all the participants in pair/mob programming are sitting in front of their own computer, screen sharing from one of the participants' computers. This has made it easier when it comes to visibility of code, and more comfortable. The communication is through a continuous meeting on EMS, which allows the participants to speak freely.

Different channels for different projects

To make the communication easier, most of the companies have different channels on their EMS for different projects. In each channel, there is a general chat, and more chats for specific areas. This has made the written communication within teams much easier because the information is stored in the chat and visible for all members of the team.

Check-ups

In some of the companies interviewed, one of the positive effects of Covid-19 is that the leaders have become better at checking on you if you have something to do. This makes the relationship with the project leader better.

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The internal communication among teams is most frequently recurrent when there is a need for exchange of knowledge, interaction on coffee- or lunch breaks, make the employees unified working for the same company, etc. The negative impact on internal communication among teams according to the interviews are:

Knowing the requirements

Having continued interaction with the other teams, working on the same project is very important to know the requirements of the project. Bad communication among teams results in bad cooperation.

Must call to get interaction

To have an interaction among teams in most of the companies interviewed for this study, you must call someone in the order teams to get an interaction. In contrast to the communication within teams, where there are different channels on EMS for interaction, the internal communication among teams is much more unstructured and time consuming.

The positive impacts on internal communication among teams is:

Unified

Before covid, there has been a lack of a “we” feeling among the offices within companies, according to the interviews. This is because companies have offices in different geographical locations and have had no interaction with each other. Since all the employees at the companies are working from home, that barrier has been erased. This has led to better communication across offices and a better “we” feeling.

More status updates

Since all the employees are working from home, it has become much easier to gather the whole company for status updates about the economy, goals, etc. Gathering the whole office in EMS meetings has made the companies more aware of the importance of such communication, and therefore there are also status updates through email in between the EMS meetings.

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4.2 Structure

“I think it's a shame with Covid-19 because we love to meet and socialize and have fun together. But it is clear that it has also developed us purely organizationally and structurally, I would say. Because it requires more of everyone in a different way, like

when you work from home.” - Anonymous interviewee.

Communication was one of the most important factors that has been affected by Covid-19. To create good communication within a company, structure is needed. From the interviews, it could be seen that it is important to have a stable structure to create a sustainable collaboration between all team members when working from home. This is to maintain an efficient agile way of working when people work from home. By analyzing the interviews, it could be seen that structure can be divided into two categories, working structure and e-meeting structure.

4.2.1 Working structure

The working structure is about the structure that has been set up to maintain the efficiency of the company.

Lack of leadership

Some of the interviewees felt that leadership has changed during Covid-19. When the team members do not have the opportunity to meet the project leader face-to-face, the leadership status becomes less clear. Some experience that the project leader is now more than often busy with other meetings and does not have time for his/her own team. This has led to interruption in the development.

Way of working

Based on the interviews, one of the most difficult tasks has been to find a sustainable method for the agile project leaders to manage their teams. For some, this has been a big problem, while for others it has not been a problem at all. Project leaders have said during the interviews that online meetings are and need to be more formal. The company, but also the project leaders, has needed to create a clear structure on how to set up the work to achieve efficiency. Without a strong and clear structure has resulted in small problems

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becoming increasingly larger. However, there have been some positive impacts as well on the formal meetings due to the relocation:

Open for change

During the interview, the interviewers asked about how their agility has been affected during Covid-19, if it has been difficult to maintain the working method. The answers have been that many project leaders and team members feel that they have become more agile now than before. In agile working methods, one should always be open to change, and change is something that the agile teams have experienced. Small changes happen constantly, but the basic structure is the same, such as processes, always having backup tasks, and delivering software when it is done.

Documentation

Based on the interviews, it has emerged that documentation is something that has been given a new priority. The documentation has become much clearer and structured. This is so that it will be possible to work from home and avoid being dependent on other colleagues. Many of the team members who have been interviewed have experienced that this has had a positive effect on their personal development, as the clear documentation provides the opportunity to solve the data on their own. However, some interviewees have experienced that they have not had access to structured documents, and this has resulted in them becoming very dependent on others.

4.2.2 E-meeting structure

The negative impact on the relocation of formal meetings into EMS found from the respondents has been the following:

“Time is money”

During the interviews it could be understood that the majority experienced that e-meetings such as daily stand-ups and sprints take far too much unnecessary time from the working days. This is often because instead of holding the meeting as efficiently as possible, time is spent on subjects which are not relevant to those present.

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Demo sessions

Having a demonstration of hardware has taken a beating from Covid-19. Based on the interviews, it was stated that participation is not good during these demonstrations, since the participants no longer "touch" the product. It has been stated that demonstration of hardware must take place on site, because presenting this through the camera is not as effective. However, demonstration of software programs is not a problem as it only requires screen sharing.

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4.3 Motivation

“I generally feel that we celebrated a lot more before Covid-19. We celebrated with cake and we celebrated with afterwork’s. We celebrated with a lot of things. I miss that

part, because it's not the same thing now. We send home small envelopes with some chocolate and other things to the employees, but it is not the same. It will not be the

same dynamic, it will not be the same joy as when you actually meet.” - Anonymous interviewee.

Motivation is another factor that has been highlighted from the interviews due to Covid-19. From the interviews it could be seen that companies did many different things to motivate their teams, such as having afterworks, fika, team gatherings and education. These events can motivate teams in different ways. Afterworks can be seen as a “reward” for the employees, where they get an opportunity to think about something else except work. Education on the other hand, motivates employees by giving them the impression that the company cares about their personal development. Due to Covid-19, the majority of the companies have had to change their attitude on how to motivate their teams. This has been done by creating other events that do not violate the restrictions in Sweden and examples of these are:

Online events

Companies have used afterwork, fika or other team gathering events to keep the motivation up for team members. To emulate these events during Covid-19, companies have created online events such as online afterwork and online fika’s, to keep their motivation up. However, this has not been as effective. Several of the interviewees felt that the idea of online events was good, but not successful. They felt that they would rather leave the computer and change the environment, than stay to attend to these online events.

Compliments

It can be lonely to work from home and it turned out that some of the developers felt forgotten by their companies. They expressed the importance to get some compliments

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on what one does during the day, by for example the project leader. This is to make the team members feel included in their teams.

Meeting free days

The increased number of e-meetings takes a lot of time according to the interviewees. E-meetings are an important way for the project leaders to communicate with their team, whilst for the developers it can sometimes feel like a disturbance in their work. A suggestion from the developers was to have one meeting free day, except for the daily standup. This provides the opportunity for developers to become more efficient in the development of projects.

Gifts

Motivating the team is especially important when people are working from home and what could contribute to this is gifts. Receiving gifts is getting a reward for the time and effort you put into the work. By doing this, the company shows its gratitude to its employees and the motivation increases.

Self-development

Working at a company where you have the potential to develop yourself is a motivating factor according to the interviews. This can be achieved by companies offering online courses, but also encouraging developers to work on their own projects. Based on an interviewee, they have a "hackathon" once a month where team members can go together and develop together.

Being included

Feeling included in a team is extremely important to become motivated. To have the opportunity to be involved in what is going on, team members need to know what, how and why tasks should be done.

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4.4 Health

“I felt really bad because of the work at home situation, so I had problems sleeping. When I had been sitting at home for 2 weeks or something, I felt that I could not fix this.

I could not sleep. I slept like 6 hours in 4 days. It kind of started because I was new at the job and I did not really know what to do. I did not get any help, so I became very stressed and insecure. I felt that I was working badly. I did not know the requirements

from the company which affected me very much because I want to do a good job. As I had barely been outside for 10 days, there was chaos with sleep and well-being." -

Anonymous interviewee

The well-being of the employees in the companies interviewed for this study, has been affected negatively. This section will go through the overall well-being, the well-being with the software developers as well as the leaders.

Overall impact on mental health

The aspects that have affected the overall well-being of mental health is that it is hard to get a home feeling working from home. Some of the participants have stated that they take away the home office on the weekends, just to get a home feeling. The constant reminder of work affects the employees negatively through stress. One participant in the study elaborated on this, saying that this has led to poor sleep.

Another overall aspect that has affected the mental well-being is that the employees miss the social and physical interaction. For many people it is important to have social interaction during the day to feel good. Companies try to solve this by having continuous meetings, online fika, online afterwork, but it is not the same when they are not seeing each other physically.

To keep track of well-being, some of the companies in the study send out well-being emails once a week. In this email, the employees answer questions about how they feel in their everyday life, and overall questions about well-being. Once a month, the leader gathers the teams and has a well-being e-meeting where they go through the things that have affected mental health.

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In the cases where the employees need help with their mental health, the procedure is the same as before Covid-19.

Well-being with the leaders

The leader has been affected since their workload has increased a lot. The reason for this is because of the increased number of online meetings. In the interviews some have stated that the leader does not even have time for their own team because of all these meetings. Some also stated that leaders in their company have had mental breakdowns due to the current situation of Covid-19. The workload has also increased since the team's well-being is worse, which means that they must spend a lot of time keeping track of their mental health and solving their situations as well. However, this is something that is very hard to keep track of when everyone is working from home. It was stated in the interview that leaders have trouble keeping track of when people start and quit working and how they feel.

Well-being with the developers

Due to the fact stated in the previous section that the leaders do not have time for their own team, it has become difficult for especially new employees to be a part of the team. New employees need guidance and interaction, which has deeply affected their mental health during Covid-19.

In one of the interviews with a leader, it was stated that young single men are feeling the worst in software teams. This is because the ones that have a family and work from home often see it as a benefit being close to the family, while the single people are sitting alone in their workplace. Why it is men, the leader could not answer. But most of the members of agile software teams are men, so the statistics might be angled.

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4.5 Relationships

“When we worked in the office, then we had coffee together, in the morning and in the afternoon. You sit in the lunchroom together and so on. Now, you do all this by yourself

instead, so you lose the social interaction with your colleagues.“ - Anonymous interviewee

This section is about how Covid-19 has affected the relationships, both internally but also externally with the customers.

Customer relationships

The external communication with customers was in most of the companies already digitized. Most of the meetings were either online meetings or emails. This was to decrease the number of travels and save time for short meetings such as participation in daily stand-ups. However, before Covid-19, the relationship with the customers was much better because companies could form activities with the customers.

During covid, the relationship with the customers has not been as good because it is hard to do activities that are within the restrictions. There has not been as many people in contact with the customers as it was before either. The software developers are in most cases only involved with the customer when there is a new big release of software and they get the information from the customers through a contact person.

The procedure for ensuring customer satisfaction during Covid-19 has however not been so affected. Companies send out blankets on mail two to three times a year, and the customers participate in daily stand-ups to know where the company is at in the project. Some of the companies interviewed said that there is increased interaction and faster interaction with the customers. This is because they can easily participate in meetings, but the relationship has still become worse than before Covid-19.

Internal relationships

The procedure for getting higher internal relationships within the companies before Covid-19, were to form activities outside of work, such as afterwork’s and team