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

The number of companies opting for remote working has been increasing over the years, and Agile methodologies, such as Scrum, were 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. To investigate this phenomenon, we used a two-phased Multi-Method study. In the first phase, we uncover how working from home impacted Scrum practitioners through semi-structured interviews. Then, in the second phase, we propose a theoretical model that we test and generalize using Partial Least Squares - Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) through a quantitative survey of 138 software engineers who worked from home within Scrum projects. From assessing our model, we can conclude that all the latent variables are reliable and all the hypotheses are significant. 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 ability of working from<br> home and the use of Scrum both contribute to project success, with Scrum acting<br> as a mediator.选择远程办公的企业数量逐年攀升，为应对分布式团队带来的协作挑战，业界适配了敏捷方法论（Agile Methodologies），例如Scrum。然而，新冠疫情（COVID-19 pandemic）催生了此前从未有过的全员居家办公模式。为探究这一全新现象，本研究采用两阶段多方法研究框架：第一阶段，通过半结构化访谈（semi-structured interviews），揭示了居家办公对Scrum从业者的影响；第二阶段，我们提出一套理论模型，并针对138名参与Scrum项目的居家办公软件工程师开展定量问卷调查，采用偏最小二乘结构方程模型（Partial Least Squares - Structural Equation Modeling，PLS-SEM）对该模型进行检验与推广验证。经模型评估，本研究证实所有潜变量均具备良好信度，且全部研究假设均具有统计学显著性。本研究强调，在居家办公环境中，需满足个体的三项先天心理需求：自主性、胜任感与归属感。最终结论显示，居家办公能力与Scrum的应用均能提升项目成功率，且Scrum在二者的影响路径中发挥中介作用。