Navigating Temporal Plurality in Agile Software Development: A Process Explanation
Information Systems Research · Mon
Abstract
Navigating temporal plurality—the superposition of temporal structures whose differing rhythms and phases may be desynchronized, generating temporal misfits—has long challenged software project teams, especially in agile software development (ASD), owing to its high velocity and iterativity. To shed light on this phenomenon, we conducted a longitudinal, theory-building study of five ASD projects. Anchored in the temporal structuring perspective, we mobilized the lens of entrainment to explain how actors respond to misfits created by conflicting temporal structures—activity cycles—by entraining (synchronizing with a dominant cycle or zeitgeber), resisting entrainment, or creating new temporal structures. We found that in ASD, temporal misfits emerge from four activity cycles: agile-delivery, organizational, agile-quality, and agile-communication, with the agile-delivery cycle participating in all the misfits we observed. We propose a two-stage descriptive process model of a temporal misfit episode, in which disturbance caused by the misfit first escalates through a disturbance-of-work mechanism until a team responds by (1) relinquishing the agile-delivery cycle, (2) preserving it, or (3) creating simultemporality, which enables two conflicting cycles to function in parallel. Responding reactivates the mechanism, leading to either renewed escalation with detrimental project effects or de-escalation with beneficial ones. At the project level, we suggest that the overall effect of temporal misfits and team responses emerges from a discontinuous compilation of heterogeneous individual episode impacts. Our study advances ASD research by positioning temporal plurality and its constitutive misfits at the heart of Agile teams’ work and foregrounding team agency. We also advance the conversation on time in organizations by elaborating the lens of entrainment. History: Suprateek Sarker, Senior Editor; Joe Nandhakumar, Associate Editor. Funding: Financial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [Grant 430-2022-00022]; the HEC Montréal Chair in Strategic Management of Information Technology; and Fonds de Recherche du Québec–Société et Culture [Grant 206971] is gratefully acknowledged. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at 10.1287/isre.2020.0604 .
Keywords
information systems development, entrainment perspective, time, case studies, process model, agile software development, temporal plurality
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