Understanding the Agile Approach: A Grounded Theory of How Empower Team Members and Stakeholders Case Study: Petroleum Corporate in Tunisia

Abstract

Purpose: The Important principles of the Agile Manifesto can be identified directly or indirectly from the characteristics of a team Agile development. It works by iterative and incremental cycles of creating value for the user, it is self-organized, in constant collaboration with his client, and tries to continuously improve by wearing a critical look at his activity and his way of function. Faced with this wide variety of choices, an inevitable question arises for companies wishing to deploy Agile: How does empowerment occur through an interactional change in Agile team developments? To address this research question, this article follows a grounded theory approach and draws on 20 semi-structured in-depth interviews with team members and project managers working with the Agile approach. From analyzing the teams and their interactions, the creation of empowerment through continuous interactions with their stakeholders in the organizational context of petroleum industries. Design/Method/Approach: In order to understand the principles of the Agil e method and the empowerment of the team in the context of Agile, we conducted an exploratory case study in a petroleum company. This study is bas ed on twenty semi-structured interviews with fifteen project managers and team members using the Agile method. Each interview took approximately 45 - 120 min. These face-to-face interviews aided to record the verbal information and capture the interviewee’s expressions and tone. All these interviews were transcribed for analysis. The NVivo software analysis was used to gather the data for the research. This data helped in developing more knowledge about tasks allocated to Agile teams. We applied open coding, the Strauss, and Corbin GT’s procedure of data analysis to participants’ transcribed interview responses. In addition to Interviews, we accompanied the teams of developers for seven months. This engagement allowed us to write observation notes and have discussions informal with developers and project managers at the corporate. Findings: We categorized the data with short phrases that summarize th e most important points during a codification. These were condensed into two to three words, captured in the NVivo. As a result, different concepts from similar codes appeared one the most prominent of which was task allocation through self-assignment. Others included manager-driven, manager-assisted, team-driven, and team-assisted task allocation. This article shows us the Agile methods at Work series. Whether for a project manager, a softw are developer, or a senior manager, this series is designed to help them to get greater agility from their team members. Our research was carried out wit hin a petroleum corporate industry Shell Upstream LTD in Tunisia. The company specializes in Oil and Gas Extraction, Mining, Quarrying, Crude petroleum, and natural gas. The company, therefore, offers its customers advice, expertise, monitoring, and support. This research has contributed to Agile practitioners. Our explanations of t he positive consequence of self-assignment should promote novice Agile teams an d their managers to attempt self-assignment as a key practice. Also, Agile teams trying to be self-organized to get solutions to their challenges in this study. Our results can be applied as a guide for the project managers to facilitate self-organi zation by empowering team members. The grounded theory is presented in a form that can be understood through well-defined: context, causal conditions, and a strategy applied by Agile teams to practice self-organ ization work. Originality/Value: The present study’s new conceptualization of empowerment as the interaction between the team and the stakeholders: Empowerment tends to be analyzed either from the view of the team participatin g in empowering manager behaviors to foster, among other aspects, the project manager of teams or from the perspective of the team’s collective sense of bein g empowered. Research considering both perspectives tend s to view empowering managers’ behaviors as ancestors of team empowerment. Empowerment tends to be studied either from the perspective of the leader engaging in empowering leadership behaviors to foster, among other aspects, the self-leadership of teams or from the perspective of the team’s collective sense of being empowered. Research considering both perspectives tend s to view em powering leadership behaviors as antecedents of team empowerment. From a managerial perspective, some managerial perspectives for the corporate are provided in this research. Based on the underlying results, there are three main processes that managers and organizations can address to realize the most practical benefits.