| Abstract: |
Are agile practices always beneficial for developers? Although agile methods, such as daily stand-ups or pair programming, are designed to enhance flexibility and productivity, developers often experience a mismatch between the team-enacted use of these practices and their own individual needs. Using daily survey responses from 149 agile developers (1,510 observations), our study uncovers a crucial yet overlooked factor; perceived (in-)congruence between team-enacted and developer-needed agile practices significantly impacts developer well-being. We show that alignment between the use and need of agile practices is associated with higher well-being, whereas mismatches—both excessive and insufficient agile practices—can be detrimental. Interestingly, we find that frequent team feedback seeking amplifies the negative effects of misalignment but does not enhance well-being when alignment is achieved. These findings challenge the assumption that the use of agile practices is inherently beneficial and highlight the need for a tailored, developer-centric approach. For organizations, the key takeaway is clear. A "one-size-fits-all" approach to agile practices can backfire. Instead, fostering alignment through adaptive work environments, flexible agile practice use, and targeted interventions can promote sustainable developer well-being and long-term agile team effectiveness. Despite significant progress in understanding how the use of agile practices in teams affects crucial developer outcomes, we still know little about whether the team-enacted use of agile practices (e.g., daily stand-up meetings or pair programming) always aligns with the developer-needed use of such practices. In other words, does incongruence between the team-enacted versus individually needed use of agile practices matter for developer well-being? Additionally, how does developers' team feedback-seeking behavior shape how developers respond to congruence and incongruence? Drawing on person-environment fit theory, we shed light on developers' perceived (in-)congruence between the team-enacted versus individually needed use of agile practices and the resulting consequences for their well-being. In an experience-sampling study with 149 developers and 1,510 daily-level responses and by using multilevel polynomial regression and response surface methods, we show that perceived congruence (versus incongruence) consistently leads to higher levels of developer well-being. We also find that not all instances in which developers perceive high levels of team-enacted use of agile practices are equivalent. In fact, depending on the developer-needed use of agile practices in their daily work, enacting a high level of agile practices in teams can be just as detrimental as enacting a low level, revealing that the experience of agile practices use is more nuanced than previously recognized. Our findings also reveal an asymmetry; frequent (versus infrequent) team feedback-seeking developers experience amplified well-being losses from incongruence but not amplified well-being gains from congruence. In follow-up interviews with 32 developers from the experience-sampling study, we corroborate the main findings of our quantitative study and provide complementary insights into important boundary conditions of incongruence effects. Overall, these insights offer important implications for research on agile information systems development and for organizations seeking to align team-enacted agile practices with developers' individual needs and feedback-seeking behavior in a human-centered and sustainable way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |