Engajamento cooperativo em projetos de desenvolvimento de software distribuído ágil por meio da promoção das interações sociais

Abstract

The distributed software development (DSD) and agile methods, especially Scrum, are approaches that continue to gain popularity. Major projects and software development programs are increasingly adopting agile development practices, known as large-scale agile projects. Likewise, frameworks for managing large agile development projects, proposed by consultants and professionals, are also gaining notoriety, such as the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) and the Large Scale Scrum (LeSS). However, the scaling of agile methods for larger projects brings barriers to social interactions, due to the geographic, temporal and cultural challenges of team distribution. In this context, obtaining project engagement by employees becomes more challenging, due to the difficulties of social interactions, which hinder collaboration, knowledge sharing, team engagement and engagement with the product to be developed. Given the existence of these social challenges, it is necessary to better investigate how to deal with social interactions to obtain employee engagement in Scrum teams in distributed software development environments. The objective of this thesis is to understand the aspects of social interaction between Scrum teams in DSD projects that adopt agile methodologies on a large scale to promote engagement in the project. The study is exploratory and qualitative in nature and followed the paradigm of interpretive research. The data were collected through a set of fifty interviews with experienced professionals in large-scale agile projects. Abduction was used to build two models in deduction cycles, based on theoretical ideas and induction, through the analysis of the interviews. The validation of the final models was done through four interviews with experts in the field. This thesis presents four academic contributions to the field of Project Management knowledge: 1. The conceptual model for passive communication (MOCPA), to evaluate the use of passive communication in DSD projects; 2. The model for Promoting Agile Social Interaction in the DSD (PASI), for promoting social interactions; 3. The construct of Cooperative Engagement and 4. The model of Cooperative Engagement through Social Interactions (EMIS), which contemplates the cooperative engagement of individuals through social interactions in distributed agile projects. In addition to academic contributions, this thesis also presents three managerial contributions: 1. The promotion of social interactions optimizes the engagement of professionals, cooperation and the knowledge sharing between them; 2. The coordination of agile processes and social interactions mitigate the barriers imposed by the distribution of teams; and 3. Communication in agile DSD environments must be designed to promote social interactions.