Team-Enacted Use vs. Developer-Needed Use of Agile Practices: How Perceptual (In-)Congruence and Team Feedback-Seeking Shape Developer Well-Being

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Benlian, Alexander; Pinski, Marc; Adam, Martin
• 署名单位: Technical University of Darmstadt; University of Gottingen
• 刊物名称: INFORMATION SYSTEMS RESEARCH
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1047-7047; 1526-5536
• DOI: 10.1287/isre.2023.0402
• 发表日期: 2025-12
• 关键词: agile practices; team-enacted use; developer needs; team feedback-seeking; Well-being; person-environment fit theory; experience sampling; multilevel polynomial regression; response surface analysis; interviews; SOFTWARE-DEVELOPMENT; expectation disconfirmation; PERSON-ORGANIZATION; CONGRUENCE; CHALLENGES; fit; environment; models; work; job

摘要

Despite significant progress in understanding how the use of agile practices in teams affects crucial developer outcomes, we still know little about whether the team-enacted use of agile practices (e.g., daily stand-up meetings or pair programming) always aligns with the developer-needed use of such practices. In other words, does incongruence between the team-enacted versus individually needed use of agile practices matter for developer wellbeing? Additionally, how does developers' team feedback-seeking behavior shape how developers respond to congruence and incongruence? Drawing on person-environment fit theory, we shed light on developers' perceived (in-)congruence between the team-enacted versus individually needed use of agile practices and the resulting consequences for their well-being. In an experience-sampling study with 149 developers and 1,510 daily-level responses and by using multilevel polynomial regression and response surface methods, we show that perceived congruence (versus incongruence) consistently leads to higher levels of developer well-being. We also find that not all instances in which developers perceive high levels of team-enacted use of agile practices are equivalent. In fact, depending on the developerneeded use of agile practices in their daily work, enacting a high level of agile practices in teams can be just as detrimental as enacting a low level, revealing that the experience of agile practices use is more nuanced than previously recognized. Our findings also reveal an asymmetry; frequent (versus infrequent) team feedback-seeking developers experience amplified well-being losses from incongruence but not amplified well-being gains from congruence. In follow-up interviews with 32 developers from the experience-sampling study, we corroborate the main findings of our quantitative study and provide complementary insights into important boundary conditions of incongruence effects. Overall, these insights offer important implications for research on agile information systems development and for organizations seeking to align team-enacted agile practices with developers' individual needs and feedback-seeking behavior in a human-centered and sustainable way.