The influence of culture and structure on autonomous teams in established companies

Abstract

Motivation: Many companies aim to provide more autonomy to their development teams. While some teams report on successes, others still struggle with the agile adaption, e.g. due to the organisational environment. Objective: Our objective was to explore how organisational culture and structure influence team autonomy in bureaucratic companies. Method and Results: 30 qualitative interviews from different business divisions at a conglomerate revealed that organisational factors related to hierarchy, specialist culture and functionally departmentalised structure decreased agile team features and consequently resulted in a reduced speed of decision-making. We suggest the Agile Matching Theory which implies that prevalent organisational factors and desired agile team features need to match to allow team autonomy to occur. Conclusion: We therefore encourage managers to further work on a learning organisation and a supportive structure within which autonomous teams can grow.