# Trying to Increase the Mature Use of Agile Practices by Group Development Psychology Training - An Experiment

## TL;DR

This study investigated whether a short group psychology training could enhance agile practices in student software development teams, but found no significant effect, suggesting more extensive or different approaches are needed.

## Contribution

It provides empirical data on the impact of brief psychology training on agile practices within student teams, highlighting the complexity of influencing team agility.

## Key findings

- No significant increase in agility from 1.5-hour training
- Possible influence of unmeasured variables in team agility
- Short training duration may be insufficient to change work methods

## Abstract

There has been some evidence that agility is connected to the group maturity of software development teams. This study aims at conducting group development psychology training with student teams, participating in a project course at university, and compare their group effectiveness score to their agility usage over time in a longitudinal design. Seven XP student teams were measured twice (43+40), which means 83 data points divided into two groups (an experimental group and one control group). The results showed that the agility measurement was not possible to increase by giving a 1.5-hour of group psychology lecture and discussion over a two-month period. The non-significant result was probably due to the fact that 1.5 hours of training were not enough to change the work methods of these student teams, or, a causal relationship does not exist between the two concepts. A third option could be that the experiential setting of real teams, even at a university, has many more variables not taken into account in this experiment that affect the two concepts. We therefore have no conclusions to draw based on the expected effects. However, we believe these concepts have to be connected since agile software development is based on teamwork to a large extent, but there are probably many more confounding or mediating factors.