From Group Psychology to Software Engineering Research to Automotive R&D: Measuring Team Development at Volvo Cars

TL;DR

This paper details Volvo Cars' successful industrial implementation of a team development tool based on group psychology, highlighting the process, challenges, and key factors for fostering agile team maturity across a large organization.

Contribution

It introduces a novel automated survey tool and implementation strategy for enhancing agile team development in an industrial setting.

Findings

Automated survey tool effectively supports team maturation

Comprehensive training and trainer development are crucial

Implementation faced and addressed multiple organizational challenges

Abstract

From 2019 to 2022, Volvo Cars successfully translated our research discoveries regarding group dynamics within agile teams into widespread industrial practice. We wish to illuminate the insights gained through the process of garnering support, providing training, executing implementation, and sustaining a tool embraced by approximately 700 teams and 9,000 employees. This tool was designed to empower agile teams and propel their internal development. Our experiences underscore the necessity of comprehensive team training, the cultivation of a cadre of trainers across the organization, and the creation of a novel software solution. In essence, we deduce that an automated concise survey tool, coupled with a repository of actionable strategies, holds remarkable potential in fostering the maturation of agile teams, but we also share many of the challenges we encountered during the implementation.