Measuring team effectiveness in Scrum

Abstract

Teams have become building blocks of organizations, leading to an exponential increase in team studies, including team effectiveness studies in Scrum software development. However, research on measuring Scrum team effectiveness based on objective measures, contrary to self-reporting with Likert scales, is absent. Through a design science research methodology with literature review, focus groups, interviews, and an expert panel, 29 objective measures were identified contributing to seven team effectiveness concepts. All measures can be quantified or directly derived from work management systems, such as Jira or Azure DevOps. Examples include the number of solved retrospective items after a new sprint, contributing to the team effectiveness concept ‘Continuous Improvement’, and the number of times a sprint goal has been achieved, contributing to both ‘Team Morale’ and ‘Stakeholder Satisfaction’. In this way, the study offers proof of the benefits of agile, especially Scrum, software development through effective teams as well as providing practitioners a first insight in benchmarking their Scrum team effectiveness.