Adapting Agile Team Practices and Competencies to Remote Work: A Socio-Technical Approach

Agile teams must develop specific competencies required in a co-location collaboration context. However, the widespread adoption of remote work has significantly altered this dynamic, where Agile teams need to develop new competencies while trying to respect Agile Manifesto values and principles. Within this context, this research tries to understand how Agile teams have adapted to sustain open communication and collective accountability in a remote work environment. Our conceptual framework is developed based on socio-technical theory and serves as a basis for interview and project documentation analysis. The research design is centered around embedded case studies in financial institutions operating under the SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework), where nine participants from two project teams have been interviewed. Results showed significant competency transformation for Agile teams, demonstrating an ongoing adjustment between technical, human, and organizational competencies in remote settings.