The effect of stress on process sustainability in scrum teams
By: Ruhollah Delpak
Tags: Stress Management, Agile Coaching, Agile Development, Teamwork, Scrum Master

How Agile Processes Preventing Work Stress?

The negative impact of stress on the productivity of individuals and teams is well known. But in software development teams, this issue appears in a more complex way and can intensify the effects of working in a stressful environment.

These effects include lack of focus, constant worrying, reduced creativity, decreased energy, and negative effects on mood and personality. All of which can significantly impact on staff turnover, tardiness, peer relationships and quality of work.

Stress in software development teams comes from two different sources:

Role Stress: The roles and related tasks, multitasking, ambiguity or incompatibility of authority and responsibilities, reward and compensation system, and the complexity of teamwork can all to stress.

Technostress: Employees in IT-related industries, especially software developers, are constantly exposed to technological changes and the emergence of new tools and methods. A situation that makes people feel that they do not have enough time for mass processing of changes and new technologies, and they are falling behind the rapid changes that emerges moment by moment. In addition, the so-called Constant-Connectivity situation makes people feel that they have to “do something” at any time and place to keep themselves up.

“Technostress” does not know time and place, and through the online tools we have created for our own well-being, they penetrate whenever and wherever we are, and in addition to psychological effects, physical effects such as eye strain, backaches, headaches, stiff shoulders, neck pain, joint pain, dry mouth and throat, muscle tension, stomach discomfort, keyboard related injuries, chest pain, rapid heart rate, irritable bowel syndrome, increased blood pressure and difficulty in breathing. (Wikipedia)

On the other hand, we know that agile methods claim to put people and their interactions at the forefront and do not expect people to suffer such injuries. but how?

The agile statement of software development, Principle 8, contains a phrase that can be the key to answering this question. The eighth principle says:

Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.

Let’s think about “sustainable development” again. The support of agile methods from sustainability of development process is a very important point. The neglect of this principle can make it difficult to achieve a sustainable rhythm for development and cause “stress” to fall like polluted water on the team tree and make it less loaded. Weaken, if not crack.

It is essential that managers, especially human resource managers, ask scrum masters and agile coaches to explain to them and work together on developing and implementing a software development process that is sustainable for organization, teams and individuals.

The activity that results in reducing the stress level of team members and ultimately preventing the economic losses of organizations.