Emergent leadership in agile teams – An initial exploration

The adoption of agile development methods is now widespread. A key aspect of the special type of teamwork promoted in agile methods is the proposition of self-organized teams without a formally assigned leader within the team. Contradicting this proposition, agile development is still in need of the outcomes of leadership such as coordination and facilitation of activities, which in turn drive performance. General group research has found leadership to emerge in an informal manner within leaderless teams. Integrating knowledge on governance in IT teams and general group research, we propose a first step to close the knowledge void on emergent leadership within agile teams and its effects on team outcomes. In this research-in-progress, we develop a conceptual model and deduct hypotheses on the emergence and effects of leadership in agile teams. We expect leadership to emerge informally within agile teams. Based on the propositions of agile development, we do not expect a single leader to emerge but leadership to be attributed to several team members. Given the different roles in agile development, this attribution may moreover differ based on different areas of reference. Drawing on extant knowledge of emergent leadership, we expect positive effects on performance if leadership is shared.