Abstract Agile coaches play a key role in supporting software teams and organisations during agile transformations, yet little is known about how they understand and design for the continuation of agility after their involvement ends. This study fills that research gap by examining how agile coaches perceive post-exit outcomes and describing the strategies they use to support endurance beyond their engagement. Drawing on sixteen semi-structured interviews with professional agile coaches across multiple organisations, we identify six interconnected themes that capture coaches’ accounts of embedding routines, transferring ownership, and aligning agile values with organisational contexts. We synthesise these themes into the concept of sustainment work, referring to the professional and organisational efforts that coaches describe undertaking to support the continuation of agile ways of working beyond their direct involvement. This synthesis is represented in an empirically derived model comprising three interrelated domains: Embedding Practices, Enabling Ownership, and Aligning Culture. The model reflects how coaches conceptualise the relationship between their interventions, anticipated post-exit trajectories, and the endurance of agile practices, rather than providing evidence of long-term organisational outcomes. The paper contributes theoretically grounded insights into how agility is understood and approached by highlighting coaches’ perceptions and intended sustainment strategies, as an ongoing organisational concern rather than a time-bound coaching intervention.

Abstract While Generative AI (GenAI) has rapidly transformed software development and GenAI tools receive widespread adoption, how humans and AI should collaborate has become a focal point for Agile practitioners, whose values emphasise teamwork and collaboration. Yet, despite growing interest, research on human-AI collaboration in software engineering, especially within Agile contexts, remains limited. Our study investigates Agile practitioners’ perceptions of collaborating with GenAI in software development activities. We conducted a survey with 73 Agile practitioners, revealing how they currently collaborate with GenAI across various activities and how they expect this collaboration to evolve. Key findings include that GenAI is currently not a substantial part of real-world workflows, being either unused or limited to an assistant role, but that there is a clear tendency towards greater AI involvement in the future, with practitioners increasingly viewing AI as a collaborator rather than merely a tool. These findings advance our understanding of human-AI collaboration in Agile settings and can guide both future research and the practical adoption of GenAI in Agile environments.

Background: Sustainable Software Engineering (SSE) is slowly becoming an industry need. While general perspectives of SSE have been studied, little is known about the context-specific sustainability needs and constraints of sectors like financial services, which are highly regulated, data-intensive, and handle millions of transactions daily. Aim: To address this gap, our research focuses on a financial services company (FinServCo) that invited us to investigate perspectives on sustainability in their IT function: how it could be put into practice, who is responsible for it, and what the challenges are. Method: We conducted an exploratory qualitative case study using interviews and a focus group with six higher management employees and 16 software engineers comprising various experience levels from junior developers to team leaders. Results: We found a clear divergence in how sustainability is perceived across organisational levels. Higher management focused on technical and economic aspects, such as cloud migration and business continuity through data availability, while developers emphasised human-centric concerns like workload and stress. Some developers were sceptical of organisational motives, viewing initiatives as PR-driven. Key challenges included knowledge gaps, cultural resistance, legacy systems, and limited client demand. Many participants favoured a dedicated sustainability team, often drawing comparisons to established security governance structures. Conclusions: SSE is shaped by organisational roles, cultural dynamics, and sector-specific constraints. The disconnect between organisational goals and individual developer needs highlights the importance of context-sensitive, co-designed interventions. Study material containing codebook and the interview questions file: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16359596

Recent technological advances have allowed robots to assist in the service sector, and consequently accelerate job and sector transformation. Less attention has been paid to the use of robots in real-world organisations where social benefits, as opposed to profits, are the primary motivator. To explore these opportunities, we have partnered with a working church and visitor attraction in the United Kingdom. We conducted interviews with 15 participants from a range of stakeholder groups within the church to understand worker perspectives of introducing a social robot to the church and analysed the results using reflexive thematic analysis. Findings indicate mixed responses to the use of a robot, with participants highlighting the empathetic responsibility the church has towards people and the potential for unintended consequences. However, information provision and alleviation of menial or mundane tasks were identified as potential use cases. This highlights the need to consider not only the financial aspects of robot introduction, but also how social and intangible values shape what roles a robot should take on within an organisation.

Abstract Agile coaching has emerged as a key enabler of agile adoption and organisational transformation. Despite its growing prevalence, there has not been much research into agile coaching, and there is a need for a better understanding of the current state of research and where the gaps lie. To fill this gap, we present a systematic mapping study (SMS) of agile coaching to identify and categorise existing research. An initial search identified 497 studies, of which 22 primary studies were selected based on inclusion and exclusion criteria. We provide a thematic analysis of the included papers and a summary of challenges and benefits associated with agile coaching. Key findings indicate a steady rate of research studies since 2013, predominantly from Europe. The most extensively researched areas are coaches’ skills, roles, and responsibilities. However, there is a noticeable lack of research depth in other areas and an absence of theory in all papers. Finally, we propose a roadmap for further research, highlighting unexplored aspects of agile coaching, including its impact across diverse organisational contexts. These findings provide a foundation for future research and offer practical insights for practitioners and researchers in the agile domain.

Gaining an understanding of the state of an organisation’s culture during Agile transformation is important because culture underpins all aspects of an organisation’s way of working and can indicate how successful the transformation has been. This paper explores the impact of Agile transformation on various dimensions of organisational culture over time within a technology organisation. Additionally, it demonstrates how datasets collected using the Pulse survey instrument, a tool for assessing an organisation’s culture, can be analysed to provide actionable insights to support organisations in their cultural transformation efforts. This paper employs a mixed research method to conduct a post-hoc analysis of the datasets obtained from a technology organisation that utilised the survey instrument in 2021 and 2022 to assess its transformation agenda. The collected data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. We also assess the internal reliability and validity of the instrument using Cronbach’s Alpha, Composite Reliability, factor loadings and Average Variance Extracted. Results show that all the Alpha values of the instrument fall between 0.744 and 0.901, which are higher than the satisfactory value of 0.700, indicating acceptable to excellent reliability. After the intervention, the targeted cultural area, that is, Trust and Transparency (TT) improved significantly, and there was a general improvement across almost all areas. The organisation found the insights provided by the survey instrument aided their understanding of the change process. This study presents an analysis framework to support organisations using or seeking to use the Pulse survey instrument in their efforts to transform culture. The findings validate the use of statistical analysis and data-driven approaches to track shifts in various dimensions of organisational culture over time. The study concludes that targeted efforts on culture elements can lead to corresponding improvements in many areas including those not targeted, emphasising the interconnectedness of Agile culture elements.

Abstract Agile organizations have to deal regularly with change and at the same time adapt to sustain agility. In this paper, we present an initial study to identify factors considered when changes need to be made to sustain agility. We used a novel data collection approach, critical decision method (CDM), and investigated three theoretical lenses, paradox theory, situation awareness and shared mental models, to explore the kind of practical consequences they help to uncover. This paper presents the findings of this initial study together with reflections on the data collection method and the three theoretical lenses. Three key dimensions relevant to sustaining agility emerge from the use of these theoretical lenses: teams vs organization; understanding the environment vs the impact of change internally; and understanding “now” vs looking into the future.

Abstract Project governance is an important activity in agile software development (ASD) projects for project success. Middle managers are part of the governance structure in ASD projects. Despite the efficacy of project governance and existence of middle managers in agile teams, project governance and middle management in ASD projects are under-researched. This multiple-case study investigates the roles of middle managers in agile project governance activities within two Nigerian ASD projects through the lens of activity theory. We collected data in semi-structured interviews, observations, questionnaires, and company documents. Our findings show that middle managers performed 25 roles related to planning and coordination for project alignment and execution, continuous improvement and organisational change, agile and technical leadership, monitoring, and capability building. We conclude that middle managers are pivotal to project governance practice and the effectual functioning of agile teams in ASD projects. The study will help agile practitioners to better understand the roles of middle managers in agile project governance. Results from this work contribute to the ‘middle management in agile’ debate and offer an alternative view that may change beliefs about middle managers in agile project settings.

Abstract The principles in the Agile Manifesto, the Scrum Guide and most other approaches to agile software development emphasize self-organizing teams, but rarely address issues of leadership. In this paper we report on a study of the nature of different aspects of leadership in agile teams. We used an established model of leadership, distinguishing transactional and transformational styles, and asked IT professionals a set of questions about the leadership they experience, both from direct supervisors (hierarchical leadership) and from the team itself (shared leadership). We determined correlation measures of these four types of leadership with the extent of agility in the whole organization. Our results show that agility is indeed related to the transformational style, but that the transactional style also plays a part, especially as shared leadership. Furthermore, even in highly agile software development, leadership by direct supervisors still plays an important role. We propose that, as software development becomes more agile, the transactional aspects of leadership may shift away from the leadership dyad between supervisor and employee into the agile team, while transformational leadership is important for both the team and supervisors. We discuss our results in light of applications for both research and practice.

Although a stable team is deemed optimal for agile project success, new team members need to join ongoing agile projects. Newcomers must rapidly assimilate into the organisational and project environment while learning how to contribute effectively to the project and integrate into the team without seriously interrupting project progress. This paper addresses how newcomers integrate into an established agile project team and the challenges newcomers and the team face during this process. This paper is a single case study of a co-located agile project team in a large IT department who regularly onboard inexperienced newcomers. We found a mixture of traditional onboarding practices and specific agile practices contribute to the onboarding process. Onboarding challenges include empowerment and mindset change, accommodating part-timers, conveying agile principles, and adjusting to changes in team composition.

Abstract Austerity and financial constraints have been threatening the public sector in the UK for a number of years. Foreseeing the threat of continued budget cuts, and addressing the situation many local councils face, requires internal transformations for financial stability without losing the key focus on public service. Agile transformations have been undertaken by organisations wanting to learn from the software development community and bringing agile principles into the wider organisation. This paper describes and analyses an ongoing behaviour-led transformation in a district council in the UK. It presents the results of the analysis of 19 interviews with internal stakeholders at the council, of observations of meetings among senior and middle management in a five-month period. The paper explores the successes and the challenges encountered towards the end of the transformation process and reflects on balancing acts to address the challenges, between: disruption and business as usual, empowerment and goal setting, autonomy and processes and procedures, and behaviours and skills. Based on our findings, we suggest that behaviours on their own cannot guarantee a sustained agile culture, and that this is equally important for enterprise agility and for large-scale agile software development transformations.

Agile approaches are adopted in industry to improve outcomes from software development, and are increasingly the subject of research studies. However, adoption is not the end of the story. Agile requires on-going change and commitment in order to become sustainable and embedded within teams and organisations. This study explores current perceptions of post-adoptive agility. We asked 50 practitioners 'what does agile sustainability mean to you?'. Analysis of practitioner comments identified four themes: being completely agile, independent, focused on business value and need, and consistent across time. Post-adoptive agile is an under-researched area, there is inconsistent use of terminology, and there is a gap between practitioners' and researchers' perceptions about what is important for sustaining agile.

Knowledge is a core resource for agile organisations that is transformed into products and services during the development process. Sharing of knowledge is essential across any organisation, and it has been claimed that the software industry requires more knowledge management than any other sector. Agile methodologies concentrate on team level collaboration, and some techniques for inter-team knowledge sharing have also proved to be successful. But these techniques focus on within-team and between-team knowledge sharing rather than knowledge sharing across the organisation. This paper presents the results of a survey with 81 responses on organisational knowledge sharing in a multinational agile company. The survey focuses on three aspects of knowledge sharing: within agile teams, beyond the team with company colleagues, and with customers. It concentrates on knowledge sharing practices, ease of knowledge sharing and motivation for knowledge sharing. Summary statistics, regression, and test of equity are used as analysis techniques. Results show that knowledge sharing with team members is significantly easier than with customers or company colleagues beyond their team. In addition, using agile practices improves ease of knowledge sharing within teams but not with customers or colleagues. Extrinsic motivators need to be in place to encourage knowledge sharing across the organisation, especially where such knowledge sharing is not an automatic consequence of completing the work.

Background: Most companies practicing Agile are not fully Agile but instead they combine both Agile and traditional practices in their operations. It is not clear how these practices can be successfully used together in an organisation. Aims: We investigate practitioners' mitigation strategies related to the challenge of doing Agile in a non-Agile environment. Method: Strategies were collected during two studies, an online survey and an interactive workshop run at an Agile meetup and analysed thematically. Results: Strategies related to the wider organisation and not just software development. Two perspectives emerged from the data: an organisational and a change perspective. Five organisational themes were identified with Management and decision-making and Culture the two biggest themes. Nine change themes were identified, with Being open, Using specific approaches and Educating the biggest themes. Conclusions: Better understanding is needed of how Agile practitioners can accomplish bottom-up change in their organisation.

The participation of end-users in the design and evaluation of technologies has long been an important principle in human–computer interaction. This article reports a study to ascertain to what extent children using participatory methods could effectively design for a surrogate population. Fifty children, from a UK primary school, participated in a design activity to specify a serious game for children in Uganda. The children’s designs were analyzed and were shown to have effectively incorporated learning and gaming aspects. Based on these designs a serious game was developed. This new serious game and the commercial game Angry Birds were both evaluated for fun with 25 children in Uganda, using the Fun Toolkit and the This or That method. The results suggested that the children found both games fun, thus confirming that the children in the United Kingdom could effectively design a fun game for a surrogate population. Despite the positive results, the reliability of the evaluation methods is questioned. Inconsistencies were noted within the individual evaluation tools and the comparative results for some constructs yielded a low reliability score. We conclude that further research is required to establish suitable evaluation methods for evaluating fun with children in developing countries.

To encourage ethical practices in participatory design with children the CHECk tool was created. This paper reports on an expert review of the CHECk tool and a validating case study. Four main challenges to the CHECk tool are identified: (1) how to inform children on the research and their role herein, (2) distinguishing between project values and designer or researcher's personal values, (3) accounting for the dynamic nature and social constructedness of values in design, and (4) the emergence of values in all stakeholders including child design partners. We advocate complementing CHECk with interactive storytelling and show how this narrative can be used to not only inform participation and achieve ethical symmetry, but also to negotiate values with child design partners.

This paper describes how the design of a novel writing interface for children was informed by requirements gathering. The derivation of a set of system requirements from observations of children using early prototypes of the interface and from modelling the system is described, and then two methods of gathering further requirements by surveying children are outlined. The relative advantages and disadvantages of each method are discussed. The children were not able to contribute to the full range of requirements necessary for a complete system, but they contributed fun requirements that the observational work failed to identify. A model of the child's relationship to interactive systems is used to discuss why this is the case.