The Impact of Working From Home on the Success of Scrum Projects: A Multi-Method Study

The amount of companies opting for remote working has been increasing over the years and agile methodologies, such as Scrum, had been adapted to mitigate the challenges caused by the distributed teams. However, the Covid-19 pandemic imposed a fully working from home context, which has never existed before. This paper employs a two-phased Multi-Method study. In the first phase, through a qualitative survey, we uncover how working from home impacted Scrum practitioners. Then, in the second phase, we propose a theoretical model that we test and generalize using Partial Least Squares - Structural Equation Modeling through a sample study of 138 software engineers who worked from home within Scrum projects. We emphasize the importance of supporting the three innate psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness in the home working environment. We conclude that the home working environment and the usage of Scrum both contribute to project success, with Scrum acting as a mediator.