Product Team in Transition: A Qualitative Case Study of Team Motivation and Collaboration during Agile Adaptation

Agile approaches have received organisation acceptance as effective frameworks for managing complicated projects in rapidly changing situations. This study explores the challenges of agile adaptation in product team motivation that attempted to implement the existing agile adaptation. In order to implement the agile adaptation, it is essential for the product team to make adjustments and collaborate with others. Inadequate procedures and outside factors have been identified by some studies as barriers to existing agile adaptation (Conboy et al., 2011). Although implementing an agile approach has numerous advantages, doing so can be more complex with adaption and modification processes, especially to align with the organisation's working environment, current team motivation or the effectiveness of current collaboration. These require extensive changes across the team. Intrinsic motivation is crucial for high levels of output and quality. The qualitative method of semi-structured interviews was chosen to focus in-depth on agile practitioners' mindsets and adaptation acceptance who had just undergone agile adaptation experience. Interviews with five experienced agile practitioners in a telecommunications company were conducted to analyse a product team, its dynamics and behaviours, and what has been learned about human interactions, such as motivation and collaboration in the context of agile adaption, conflict, and challenges. We found that it is important for an agile product team with multidisciplinary expertise to work towards a common goal, foster team spirit, share the vision, and set clear goals with good collaboration and flexibility in reprioritising the tasks.