Understanding how agile teams reach effectiveness: A systematic literature review to take stock and look forward
R. Steegh, Karina Van De Voorde, Jaap Paauwe
Abstract
In a global environment that continues to challenge organizations' responsiveness, agile teams have proliferated in diverse sectors of practice and streams of research. However, scholars also indicate that agile teams, their way of working, and how they achieve effectiveness seem to be an undertheorized phenomenon. To better account for and understand how agile teams reach effectiveness, we aim to compile, organize, and synthesize the agile team literature using the IMOI model as a theoretical anchoring point. We systematically reviewed 74 studies on agile teams and identified their key input, mediating, and outcome factors. This effort has, consequently, allowed us to identify crucial theoretical and methodological gaps in the understanding of how agile teams manage uncertainty and what is needed to close these gaps. Furthermore, we identified three themes relevant to all teams dealing with the management of uncertainty. • We compile, organize, and synthesize the agile team effectiveness literature. • Reflexivity, shared leadership, and empowering behavior identified as crucial processes. • Team orientation, psychological safety, shared mental models, transactive memory systems identified as key emergent states. • Crucial theoretical and methodological gaps identified, along with future research avenues. • Collaboration, egalitarianism, and community identified as key for teams that manage uncertainty.