Team Collaboration and Productivity
Experiences of agile, hybrid, and traditional teams with remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic
The shift to remote work during the COVID 19 pandemic was a challenge for employees and teams. Social contacts and the multitude of informal encounters and communication streams decreased, interaction took place primarily virtually and required new communication patterns. As this study shows, based on a survey of 1,516 working people, work groups had very different experiences with these challenges. Agile teams were able to slightly increase the quality of collaboration and productivity when working remotely. In contrast, respondents who worked in traditional teams reported slightly negative effects of working remotely during the pandemic on teamwork quality and team productivity. On the one hand, these differences are related to technical factors: agile teams were already significantly better equipped with digital tools than traditional workgroups before the pandemic. On the other hand, agile teams have closer social relationships within the team as well as more extensive experience with flexible adaptation to changing conditions, which made them more resilient during the COVID-19 pandemic.