An Investigation of the Decision-Making Process in Agile Teams

This paper firstly explores the decision-making process in agile teams using scrum practices and secondly identifies factors that influence the decision-making process during the Sprint Planning and Daily Scrum Meetings. We conducted 34 semi-structuredinterviews and 18 observations across four agile teams. Our findings show that a rational decision-making process is sometimes followed in the Sprint Planning and Daily Scrum Meetings and that three factors can influence the rational decisionmaking process: sprint duration, experience and resource availability. Additionally, decisions are not always made in a collaborative manner by team members. This research contributes to the decisionmaking literature and project management literature by highlighting difficulties pertinent to decision-making in agile teams.