The Impact of Working From Home on the Success of Scrum Projects: A Multi-Method Study

<p>The number of companies opting for remote working has been increasing over&nbsp;the years, and Agile methodologies, such as Scrum, were adapted to mitigate the&nbsp;challenges caused by the distributed teams. However, the COVID-19 pandemic&nbsp;imposed a fully working from home context, which has never existed before. To&nbsp;investigate this phenomenon, we used a two-phased Multi-Method study. In the&nbsp;first phase, we uncover how working from home impacted Scrum practitioners&nbsp;through semi-structured interviews. Then, in the second phase, we propose&nbsp;a theoretical model that we test and generalize using Partial Least Squares&nbsp;- Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) through a quantitative survey of&nbsp;138 software engineers who worked from home within Scrum projects. From&nbsp;assessing our&nbsp;model, we can conclude that all the latent variables are reliable and&nbsp;all the hypotheses are significant. We emphasize the importance of&nbsp;supporting&nbsp;the three innate psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness&nbsp;in the home working environment. We&nbsp;conclude that the ability of working from<br> home and the use of Scrum both contribute to project success, with Scrum acting<br> as a mediator.</p>