The Role of Psychological Safety in Implementing Agile Methods across Cultures

Abstract

Overview: This paper emphasizes the cultural challenges of implementing Agile methods. We applied a psychological safety framework in an empirical case where Agile methods were implemented across workplace cultures, which helped define challenges related to psychological safety in three areas: (1) cultural differences related to attitudes toward inclusiveness, (2) cultural differences related to perceptions of and trust in collective responsibility, and (3) cultural differences related to openness in communication. These findings suggest that working across cultural boundaries adds to the challenges with Agile implementation found in other studies.