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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol. 10, No. 1
Publication Date: January 25, 2023
DOI:10.14738/assrj.101.13461.
Aluwi, A. H., Omar. M .K., Hussein, N., Mohd, I. H & Rusdi, S. D. (2023). Developing Work Practices and Sustainable Talent
Management of Autonomous Agile Teams. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 10(1). 148-152
Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom
Developing Work Practices and Sustainable Talent Management
of Autonomous Agile Teams
Ainie Hairianie Aluwi
Faculty of Business and Management
Universiti Teknologi MARA,
Cawangan Selangor Kampus Puncak Alam,
42300, Bandar Puncak Alam, Selangor, Malaysia
Muhamad Khalil Omar
Faculty of Business and Management
Universiti Teknologi MARA,
Cawangan Selangor Kampus Puncak Alam,
42300, Bandar Puncak Alam, Selangor, Malaysia
Norashikin Hussein
Faculty of Business and Management
Universiti Teknologi MARA,
Cawangan Selangor Kampus Puncak Alam,
42300, Bandar Puncak Alam, Selangor, Malaysia
Idaya Husna Mohd
Faculty of Business and Management
Universiti Teknologi MARA,
Cawangan Selangor Kampus Puncak Alam,
42300, Bandar Puncak Alam, Selangor, Malaysia
Syezreen Dalina Rusdi
Faculty of Business and Management
Universiti Teknologi MARA,
Cawangan Selangor Kampus Puncak Alam, 42300,
Bandar Puncak Alam, Selangor, Malaysia
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this research is to examine the practice behind sustainable agile
work practices. In the wake of Covid-19, organizations need to understand the
importance of agile development processes to be able to continue doing business.
This study looks at a process made popular by software engineering development
in the context of post covid organization. This study takes consideration into
existing social-psychology research from a human resource perspective. Namely,
this study will examine group socialization and how much new members of the
organization contribute to the group, particularly in sustaining organization goals.
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Aluwi, A. H., Omar. M .K., Hussein, N., Mohd, I. H & Rusdi, S. D. (2023). Developing Work Practices and Sustainable Talent Management of
Autonomous Agile Teams. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 10(1). 148-152
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.101.13461
Keywords: Work Practices, Sustainable Talent Management, Autonomous Agile Teams,
Covid-19
INTRODUCTION
Post Covid 19 is changing the organizational landscape as we know it. Organizations are
required to find digital solutions and to work remotely to serve employees and most
importantly customers, develop new ways of doing things to keep the organization competitive
(Moe, Stray, & Hode, 2019). Developing new ways of working requires team to be more agile.
Particularly autonomous teams (also known as self – organizing or self – managing teams).
Autonomous teams are defined as “teams that are given the freedom by management to take
responsibility for their supervisors and are composed of people with a variety to effectively
tackle the variety in their environments. Autonomous teams are found in sectors like ICT,
telecom, finance and banking, energy, transport and manufacturing. Moe, Stray and Hode
(2019) mentioned that in the ICT industry autonomous team are more likely to use an agile
process.
However, organizations are now required to use technology in wake of this pandemic, which
would mimic the use of technology in ICT organizations. Hence, the need for this research to
examine the agile work practices’ effect on new members in an organization (new talent in an
organization and keeping them competitive). So the question is does the organization need to
transform to an agile operating system? With the new norm set in place, agility is not the
question but how do we implement it? This is what this study examines to help the organization
understand how to easily into an agile process, particularly the people and technology facet of
the organization (Brousseau, Ebrahim, Handscomb, & Thaker, 2019)
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
1. How to implement agile practice for members’ commitment to the group's goal
fulfilment?
2. What is the impact of agile practice on sustaining organizations?
3. How does agile practice influence an organisation’s commitment to new members in
achieving organisational goals?
LITERATURE REVIEW
The core of agile practice can be divided into five main elements. Here the researchers will
discuss these elements according to Gren (2020) for software development.
Iterative Development - A Core Practice of Agile Development
Delivering in short iterations has high face validity, but when broken down, these ideas include
a diversity of competencies and dynamics needed by the agile team to deliver value in such
short iterations. In more general management research, there has been more thorough
research on which general work practices contribute to performance and to successfully
implement iterative development, the team must have a high degree and maturity of, for
example, staffing, decentralized decision-making, and communication. So, to understand the
dynamics of iterative development, researchers should consider these confounding factors
before they jump to conclusions about other found effects.
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Iteration Planning - A Teamwork Practice
Obtaining empowered and motivated individuals that have the needed support to solve any
given task together with high levels of trust, are all aspects known to be necessary but are not
always in place. Creating a shared vision has also been shown in research to be a key to success
since the beginning of the 1990s and is one of the main components of transformational
leadership. A shared vision is necessary since the team needs an overall goal to break down
when planning the upcoming iteration. The importance of simplicity in agile is somewhat
connected to the concept of reducing waste in lean manufacturing, together with the continued
avoidance of doing unnecessary activities in the project (or process) life-cycle. To plan in such
a way, the team must know the members’ real competencies and abilities, which also implies
maturity in the development process and that the members of the group are committed and
fully integrated into the group. With such prerequisites, understanding the group socialization
process then becomes paramount when understanding how teams plan in short iterations.
Stand-Up Meetings - A Teamwork Practice
Developers, but also business people and testers, should be on the same team and
collaboratively work together through the whole project life-cycle (i.e., having cross-functional
teams). When connecting the popularity of having cross-functional teams in the modern
workplace to social identity theory, it becomes clear that it decreases intergroup bias. Having
these various organizational functions share their chores and issues often, would be expected
to increase cohesion and understanding of the whole project through shared mental models,
which have also gained initial empirical support. Having social identity theory and intergroup
bias as factors in software engineering research would then probably increase the explained
variance.
Retrospectives - A Teamwork Practice
The idea of a retrospective meeting is that the team should reflect on possible improvement
points about their teamwork at the end of each iteration. More generally, such reflective
meetings are often called team debriefs, and have been shown with scientific rigour to increase
effectiveness. McHugh et al. (2011) found that these types of meeting need work and careful
guidance to function in their intended way and also in software development. In a recent
longitudinal study, Lehtinen et al. (2017) showed that, initially, newly formed teams focus more
on task progress and task outcome and, as the teams mature, they focus to a larger extent on
process and cooperation. Such findings also relate the “agility” of a team to group socialization
and group development since members of the group will behave differently depending on how
well-integrated, they are in the team, meaning that a well-integrated individual will be more
likely to perform retrospectives in the way they are intended. If the socialization process is not
a part of understanding the dynamics of retrospective meetings, studies will have difficulty
explaining and predicting patterns of behaviour.
Co-location - A Teamwork Practice
Having the team co-located in the same room with requirements as sticky notes on physical
boards has been promoted by the agile community to, again, increase the velocity of
development in a rapidly changing environment. Many cases have been reported where the
communication challenges of distributed teams have been satisfactorily dealt with using
modern technology and slightly different practices. Another study showed that both agile and
traditional projects have the same issues regarding co-location. All-in-all, every social aspect of
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Aluwi, A. H., Omar. M .K., Hussein, N., Mohd, I. H & Rusdi, S. D. (2023). Developing Work Practices and Sustainable Talent Management of
Autonomous Agile Teams. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 10(1). 148-152
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.101.13461
building a relationship will become more cumbersome with distance and this implies that more
effort is needed to mitigate these challenges. Since the social problems are amplified with
distance, failing to understand their influence in distributed agile teams will have even larger
negative effects on teamwork. And since agile processes are dependent on the team as a
working unit, understanding the social aspects of both distributed and co-located teams are a
key to building effective agile teams.
Objectives of the Research:
To investigate a way to implement agile practice for members’ commitment to a group’s goal
fulfilment.
To investigate the impact of agile practices on sustaining organizations.
To examine how agile practice influences to organization’s commitment of members to
achieving organizational goals.
METHODOLOGY
This research group will investigate how organizations help new team members shift from an
individual view of working to a team-oriented view of working in an organization that is moving
to be agile. The study will select an appropriate method for addressing the research question
using respondents from local university intern students. The data will be collected primarily
through interviews. All people in the project team will be asked if they would agree to be
interviewed and will be provided with an information sheet about the research. More than half
of the project team will be interviewed. The set of interviews covers a range of interns from
local universities to other Team members who had the longest experience in the project team.
Initial meetings and observations will be held and followed by interviews and observations of
the workplace. Two researchers will carry out the interviews. The interviews will be semi- structured and followed by an interview schedule, but the interviewers will strive to remain
open to new ideas and probe for additional information when necessary or relevant to the topic.
All interviews will be transcribed, and then analysed using the NVIVO tool. Observations of daily
work and specific meetings will be undertaken to get to know team members, observe how the
teamwork and aspects of team culture, and identify problems. Observations will be recorded
with field notes and recordings during and immediately following the observation session. The
interview transcripts will be initially coded by the first author for themes related to
socialization approaches, practices and challenges. The data will also be analysed to understand
the team’s history, work practices (both social practices and agile practices), and the
organization and team culture. Once this is completed, the researchers will map the
socialization approach and practice theme. The researchers will then further analyse the
themes to separate agile-related and traditional approaches. All researchers will review the
final analysis, and a draft of the paper will be shared with the research participants for review
and discussion before submission (Gregory, et. al., 2020).
CONCLUSION
Undergraduates will be the focal point of the organization when they enter the organization.
Many studies examine ICT companies and software development already in existence. This
study investigates post-pandemic ODL products (which is our student’s ability to exist in the
new job market). What is unique about this study is we are examining how ODL help or hinders
our new graduate’s movement into an agile organization. This is a preliminary study that is
ready to contribute to theory building in assessing the socialization process of new graduates
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after the process of lack of socialization during class sessions and essentially using technology
to connect with group members. The researcher plan to get data on how to essentially help
graduates prepare for real-world experience.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This research was funded by Universiti Teknologi MARA, Cawangan Selangor, file no 600-
TNCPI 5/3/DDF (FPP) (003/2021).
References
Brosseau, D., Ebrahim, S., Handscomb, C., & Thaker, S. (2019). The journey to an agile organization. McKinsey &
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