Little Stakeholder Communication in Distributed Scrum Projects During the Covid-19 Period

ABSTRACT

Agile methods have recently been popular by software development teams, with Scrum being the prominent process over the last decade. In Scrum, the Scrum Master serves the developers, the Product Owner, and the organization by coaching, leading, mentoring, planning, removing impediments, etc. Additionally, the Scrum Master is accountable for establishing the developer’s effectiveness. The global pandemic of Covid-19 changed the world unexpectedly in March 2020. Work has mostly shifted to a remote setting, and meetings have mostly transferred to being remote. People have had to adapt to these new circumstances worldwide. This research aimed to explore the changes that Scrum Masters and their teams have had to face during the first year of the Covid-19 period by increasing distributed working and the changes in the Scrum Master’s responsibilities. The results indicate that the most significant change has been decreasing communication with stakeholders and users after working more distributed. Additionally, not meeting socially, as the teams did before, has been a big challenge for the Scrum Teams. © 2022, IFIP International Federation for Information Processing.