1. Aalto-university
School of Science
Computer Science division
Leadership in Agile Self-organizing
Software Development Teams
Implementing Scrum
Bachelor’s thesis
April 18th 2016
Nicolas Dolenc

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Aalto-university, PB 11000, 00076 AALTO
www.aalto.fi
Summary of Bachelor’s thesis
Author Nicolas Dolenc
Title Leadership in Agile self-organizing teams implementing Scrum
Educational program Computer Science
Major Software Engineering and Business Code of Major T3003
Teacher(s) in charge Juho Rousu, Eero Lassila
Supervisor Marjo Kauppinen
Date 18.04.2016 Pages 23 Language English
Summary
There is a need to define leadership in self-organizing teams in order to perform effective leadership
in Scrum processes. By clearly defining leadership tasks one can analyze performance in self-
organizing teams. This literature review identifies what leadership is in self-organizing teams
implementing Scrum. The findings of the reviewed publications in the field of leadership and
management, along with the publication concerning Scrum, were gathered in tables and
systematically analyzed by comparing the findings from both fields. The findings indicate that
leadership differs from management, but they complement each other. Furthermore self-organizing
teams are better described by their equivalent self-managing teams. These combined findings
compared to the theory of Scrum indicates that Scrum only explains a management process, but does
not elaborate on conducted leadership. Field studies of teams implementing Scrum help elaborate
on leadership tasks and they indicate that leadership, at least to a certain extent, is performed by the
Scrum Master or Agile coach. The conclusion of this literature review is that both leadership and
management are needed in self-organizing teams whether it is external, internal, personified or
distributed. However in the case of agile self-organizing teams implementing Scrum, external
leadership is combined with distributed internal management. Hence, self-managing teams are a
better description for self-organizing teams implementing the traditional form of Scrum.
Key Words leadership, management, Scrum, self-organizing, self-managing, Agile

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1. Table of contents
2. Introduction.................................................................................................................... 4
3. Research method............................................................................................................ 5
4. Leadership and management.......................................................................................... 7
5. Self-managing and self-organizing teams.................................................................... 10
6. Scrum projects ............................................................................................................. 12
6.1 Formal roles in Scrum ............................................................................................... 12
6.2 Informal roles in Scrum............................................................................................. 15
7. Discussion.................................................................................................................... 17
7.1 Leadership in Agile self-organizing teams implementing Scrum ............................. 17
7.2 Criticism .................................................................................................................... 18
8. Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 19
9. References.................................................................................................................... 21

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2. Introduction
Agile Methodology has been widely studied, becoming a mature field of research. However,
in the end of the past decade further studies in leadership of agile teams were deemed
necessary [1]. A few studies on leadership of agile teams have been performed [2] [3] [4]
[5], but their goal has not been to cross-reference the findings with studies and theories of
leadership. The methodology of this literature review aims to compare leadership theories
concerning the difference between management and leadership, with agile management
theories and case study findings. However, leadership can be a matter of perception [6] and
this makes cross referencing with leadership theories not a straight forward task. The reason
leadership versus management theories are of interest to this study, is because the idea
behind Agile practices is to turn traditional project managers into “facilitators” or “coaches”
that help a self-organizing team [7]. Additionally if traditional managers are also leaders [8],
there might be something lost in the conversation. Furthermore there is not a clear coherent
distinction between a “self-managing” team and a “self-organizing” team in academic
literature and what the significance of the difference is in terms of leadership or management.
Understanding and highlighting these factors might change the way leadership and
management are perceived in agile teams, especially in teams implementing Scrum and the
perceived significance of an Agile Coach being present when a team is implementing Scrum.
This literature review strives to identify which leadership tasks are performed in an agile
self-organizing team when implementing scrum. In order to answer the research question,
this research paper will argue that leadership is not to be confused with management. This
study will highlight the key differences between what are considered as “managerial” tasks
and what are considered as “leadership” tasks. Furthermore a definition of self-organizing
teams is needed in order to clarify the terminology used in the field of research.
This paper will firstly present the research method and clearly define the research question.
Secondly it will discuss the difference between management and leadership collecting
findings into a table. The following chapters will then discuss self-management and self-
organizing teams, after which there will be chapter elaborating on teams in the Scrum
framework to create practical discussion points for the previous chapters. Before the

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conclusion a discussion will be presented around the research questions together with
criticism regarding the used references.
The methodology gathers sufficient references through a literature review on leadership
theories in order to challenge the perception of leadership in self-organizing teams
implementing Scrum. By collecting leadership notions that contradict notions of self-
organizing teams, one can better understand how to implement true leadership in self-
organizing teams.
3. Research method
The goal of this literature review is to answer the following research question:
 What is leadership in agile self-organizing teams implementing Scrum?
For one to answer the research question there is a need to define “leadership”, “self-
organizing team” and the “Scrum framework”. The preliminary assumption is made that
leadership is not the same as management and this is a key factor when trying to answer the
research question.
A preliminary literature review was conducted in the area of interest gathering papers by
searching with the search words: a) leadership & management in search for the articles and
papers differentiating the two. b) leadership, self-organizing-/ self-managing teams, agile
software development, scrum in search for studies and articles concerning leadership of self-
organizing teams.
The first step of the literature review was to find relevant references that describe and
differentiate leadership and management. Three interesting publications [9] [10] [11] were
found and analyzed systematically. Based on the analysis, a separation is made between
leadership and management tasks. The findings are summarized in two tables; Table 1 –
Management tasks on page 7 and Table 2 – Leadership tasks on page 8.
The preliminary literature review sparked a notion that self-organizing and self-managing
teams do not perform the same tasks, however it did not yield an academic publication that
discussed their difference. Nonetheless one answer was found from computer science
theories describing systems and the answer supported by non-academic, but well reviewed

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writings. The difference being that self-managing teams (or systems) do not decide what the
goals are, only in which order they are executed whereas self-organizing also choose the
goals [12].
Based on the notion that a self-managing team differs from a self-organizing team a number
of publications were gathered to discuss their supposed difference [13] [14] [15] [16]. The
approach was to identify what a self-managing team is defined as in publications not directly
under the Agile methodology research field and compare the findings to how self-organizing
teams are describes in Agile methodologies. However the result of the reviewed material
yielded the surprising result that self-managing teams are actually the same as self-
organizing teams, contradicting the notion from the preliminary literature review.
Additionally the findings were compared with the findings from Table 1 and it was
concluded that “self-managing” is a better description than “self-organizing”.
In need of frameworks to discuss in the practical implications of the findings in chapters 4
& 5, a number of publications [7] [17] [18] [19] were chosen to describe the Scrum
framework in theory and one [2] picked because it built a grounded theory of leadership
roles found in teams implementing Scrum. The findings are gathered in chapter 6, which is
divided into two subchapters. Chapter 6.1 presents the formal roles in scrum as presented by
Schwaber [17], which were systematically analyzed and synthesized into three tables. Each
of the three tables describes tasks performed by the three formal Scrum roles. Chapter 6.2
discusses the informal roles in Scrum by presenting the results of a Grounded Theory [2].
The results of the Grounded Theory is shown in Table 6 and further analyzed by compering
to the findings presented in Table 1 & 2.
In chapter 7 the findings in chapters 4 & 5 are discussed with help of the findings in chapter
6. Chapter 7 is divided in two subchapters one discussing the research question and one
containing criticism towards the referenced material, along with the conducted study in
general. The final chapter is the conclusion that briefly summarizes the findings of this
literature review.

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4. Leadership and management
One perception of the difference between leaders and managers is that manager’s act
somewhere below the leaders in a traditional organizational hierarchy structures. However
the research in the field describes management as a function within an organization that is a
necessity for any organization for it to work and leadership as an energizing relationship
between those who follow and those who lead [11]. Furthermore when trying to define
leadership there are two underlying challenges one needs to bear in mind; 1. Everyone has
an intuitive understanding of leadership based on their own gathered knowledge and this
knowledge is usually hard to define in a comprehensive form. 2. Everyone is influenced by
their theoretical point of view, either one sees leadership as a personal trait or a consequence
of group relations [6].
According to Maccoby management tasks can be distributed among a team, all of the tasks
regarded as management related task do not have to be performed by the same person. This
implies that in order to implement excellent management you necessary do not need a good
manager [11]. Another more comprehensive research and theory described in a book by J.P.
Kotter builds on the same notions stating that the outcomes of great management is
predictability and order, which keeps projects delivering on time and according to
expectations [10, p. 6].
Management being a function that allows organizations to move forward and ensure they do
so, whereas the outcome of leadership is “change” according to Kotter’s findings [10, p. 6].
Furthermore Maccoby emphasizes that good leaders develop trust, which is the key factor
that will allow the followers to be motivated and inspired by leadership [11]. Maccoby’s
view on trust with Kotter’s definition of leadership combines the view that motivation and
inspiration in the ones who “follow” is what yields the outcome of good leadership. This
notion has also been referenced in other studies [6, p. 6].
In order to clarify the difference between management and leadership the findings from three
different studies are gathered in two separate tables. The first table lists the tasks related to
management and gives a short description. The second one does the same for leadership
tasks. The numbers are references to the different studies. The tables in the studies were not

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identically constructed and Kotter’s book had many tables in it, in this case the one on page
six was used for comparison, nevertheless the reason for creating these tables was to identify
the key activities in order to compare those with the findings in the other chapters of this
study.
Table 1 – Management tasks
Management task Description References
Planning Creating action points, along with
distribution of resources over a period of
time
[11] [10] [9]
Budgeting Making financial decisions on how much
financial resources can and will be spent
[11] [10] [9]
Evaluating Assessing quality of work [11]
Facilitating Gathering the needed support and making it
available. Also coordinating engagements
[11] [10] [9]
Limits choice Controls the set of options in which decision
can be made
[9]
Organizing Arranging project resources such as money,
time and people according to needs
[11] [10] [9]
Staffing Allocating human recourses according to
needs
[10]
Controlling Limits choice to a certain set of tasks and in
which order they should be performed
[10] [9]
Problem Solving Being the entity that solves any issues that
must be solved
[10] [9]
Monitoring Oversees progress and supervises work [10] [9]
Managing vision order Deciding in which order tasks are performed [10] [9]
Executing without emotion Little or no emotion involved when
executing any form of task or decision
[9]

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Table 2 – Leadership tasks
Leadership tasks Description References
Selecting talent Choosing who can be a part of an
organization, team or project
[11]
Motivating Creating reasons for people to act or behave
in a certain way
[11] [10] [9]
Coaching Providing a more experienced view and
guidance on subject of matter
[11]
Building trust Creating an environment where one can rely
on coworkers
[11]
Improves labor relations Making the working environment a more
pleasant place for everyone
[10] [9]
Increases choice Expanding or eliminating obstacles that
limits decision making
[9]
Inspiring Creating positive feelings that may spark an
interest or ability to act.
[10] [9]
Establishing direction Creating a vision [10] [9]
Aligning people Motivate people to work towards the same
goals or vision
[10] [9]
Promoting useful change Foreseeing or understanding the form of
change needed and leading the change
[10] [9]
Executing with emotion A lot of emotion involved when executing
any form of task or decision
[9]
What can be found when comparing the two tables is that the leadership tasks all have aspects
concerned with human relations, whereas managerial tasks include aspects also related to
time, financial resources and working environment restrictions. The findings support the
previously mentioned view that management tasks are functional. What the combined
findings in Table 2 emphasize, is the importance of positive emotions involved in leadership

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tasks. Leadership is more specific than just being a form of relationship that promotes useful
change, it is also about creating positive feelings one could compare to the wellbeing of
employees. Inspiration, motivation and building trust are all positive feelings, strengthened
the higher the emotion is felt. Even if leadership is associated with positive feelings one
should not interpret managerial tasks to be associated with negativity. They clearly have a
separate set of tasks that compensate each other. Leadership provides the motives and
direction in the right environment. Management provides the structure and the stepping
stones to operate in the right direction and within the right environment.
However as Kotter remarks, even though leadership and management “… are two distinctive
and complementary activities. Both are necessary for success in an increasingly complex
and volatile business environment.” [10, p. 103]. In other words an organization cannot do
with only one of the two. This highlights another key factor to consider when discussing the
differences between management and leadership. The general perception is that they are two
separate people instead of considering that they can be performed by the same person
depending on the circumstances [20]. For this reason Mintzberg, in his book [20], overlaps
the use of the words leadership and management. A notion he has built on from his writing
in the mid 1970’s [8]. However, this literature review will not interleave the two for clarity
reasons.
5. Self-managing and self-organizing teams
The preliminary literature review yielded a notion that there was a need to clarify between
self-managing and self-organizing teams. This chapter will present self-managing and self-
organizing teams as the field of leadership research presents them. Furthermore this chapter
will refrain from referencing the definition of self-managing and self-organizing teams in
agile methodologies. The reason for this is that many agile publications use both self-
managing and self-organizing in their descriptions of teams, however they do not clearly
elaborate a list of tasks such teams employ.
In the late 1970’s one started facing problems with employees related to their motivation,
one approach to solve the issue was to use self-managed work groups [13]. This notion was
also described by Kotter where at that time, a sudden need of a new form of management

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and leadership was needed, after decades of relatively easy economic growth [10].
According to Kotter the reasons for the need of this new type of organizational structuring
were a combination of different kinds of change in the environments that were happening at
an even faster pace. “More change demands more leadership” [10, p. 13], a way of making
decision making faster is lowering hierarchy structures and bringing management level
problem solving to an operational level [20]. Hence self-management teams started
emerging, however Manz and Sims who collaborated on several papers on self-managing
teams stated that these teams still need external leadership [14]. A practical reason for the
need of external leadership is in a case of conflict within the team. According to a case study
done by Langefeld [15], conflict usually occurs when there is a lack of trust and self-
management might perform inefficient restructuring when trying to resolve the conflict. The
lack of trust in a team correlates with the findings in table two; leaders build trust, hence an
external entity is at least needed for that activity if the team is self-managing.
According to Manz and Sims the key activities of an external leader is to “… facilitate the
team’s self-management through self-observation, self-evaluation, and self-reinforcement”
[13, p. 1]. This can be interpreted as; there is a certain set of activities a self-managing team
is not capable of performing independently; however it does not necessarily mean the team
is not capable of learning how to perform these activities. A couple of published papers [21]
[22] on self-organizing software development teams, state that they use the definition of self-
organizing teams as “autonomous work groups” are described by Guzzo and Dickenson [16].
Guzzo and Dickenson in their turn state that there has been a broad variety on words used to
describe these autonomous work groups. However Guzzo and Dickenson clearly define that
they use the concept of “autonomous work groups” as a synonym for “self-managing teams”
[16, p. 324]. Their description of tasks are in-line with the managerial tasks described in
Table 1 on page 7. Furthermore, their description of autonomous work groups lacks the
attributes of the tasks associated with leadership tasks described in Table 2 on page 8.
The findings indicate that self-managing teams are the same as self-organizing teams at least
in the sense that neither teams employ all of the leadership tasks, presented in Table 2 on
page 8, within the team. In other words, whether one is concerned with self-organizing teams
or self-managing teams there would still be a need of some form of external leadership that

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performs the tasks found in Table 2 for the team to be able to reach its full potential.
Additionally, since self-managing includes the word “management” and the tasks of such
teams are consistent with the tasks in Table 1, it would make sense to call these teams “self-
managing” instead of “self-organizing” if there in fact is no difference between the two.
However this is a discussion for another research paper, since this statement would mean
that all agile studies referenced in this literature review are using a misleading terminology.
6. Scrum projects
Agile methodologies and especially Scrum theories state that teams implementing the
methodologies are self-organizing. In Scrum, self-organizing teams are regarded as Agile
teams that consist of “individuals [that] manage their own workload, shift work among
themselves based on need and best fit, and practice team decision making” [18] as explained
by Highsmith, the co-writer of the Agile manifesto [19]. However Highsmith does not
clearly elaborate on what the team can make decisions on, he only highlights the fact that
decision making is made jointly within the team. This description of practices within the
team does not suggest that self-organizing teams in Agile do any of the leadership tasks
described in Table 2, but they do employ managerial tasks listed in Table 1.
6.1 Formal roles in Scrum
Scrum was developed for organizations struggling with complex development projects [17,
p. 4]. Scrum, as Agile processes in general, aims to tackle the challenge of change with
creative people rather than with processes [23]. Scrum is meant to be the exact opposite of
traditional project management, where it is not deterministic and without comprehensive
documentation. Scrum entails incremental releases developed by a small self-organizing
team, according to the needs of a product owner (usually a customer) and the working
process is supported by a Scrum Master [17] [7]. In short the formal roles in the Scrum
framework can be listed as follow:
 Product Owner - usually a customer defining what problem the product should solve
 Scrum Master - a form of Agile Coach or mentor
 Self-organizing team - a relatively small team

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In order to present a more detailed description of the form of tasks executed by each of the
three formal roles the findings are gathered in their respective tables. Table 3 presents the
task of the product owner, Table 4 the tasks of the Scrum Master and Table 5 the tasks of
the self-organizing team. All of the tasks in Tables 3-5 are based on findings of reviewing
Schwaber’s [17] description of Scrum, since Schwaber is regarded as the first one to describe
the Scrum process [24] and he is extensively referenced in the field of agile research.
Table 3 – Tasks of the Product Owner
Product Owner Tasks Description
Representing project Handling all stakeholder interests concerning the project
and the resulting outcome
Creating initial release plan Planning initial timeline for the project
Securing funding Creating and presenting initial requirements-, return on
investment- and release plans to secure initial and ongoing
funding
Prioritizing tasks, planning Using product backlog to prioritize work and functionalities
to be released
Table 4 – Tasks of Scrum Master
Scrum Master Tasks Description
Teaching Teaching all project stakeholders the Scrum Process
Implementation of Scrum Implementing Scrum in ways that fit the organization and the
project environment
Monitoring Making shore Scrum practices and processes are followed
according to Scrum rules
Controlling external
influence
Not allowing non-stake holders to interfere with project and
allowing stake holders to act according to needs
Helps overcome issues When team dynamics related problems or conflicts occur the
Scrum master helps in resolving and overcoming these by
facilitation

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Table 5 – Tasks of Self-Organizing team
Team Tasks Description
Being cross-functional Distributing tasks according to discussion and needs. Not
according to pre-defined responsibilities
Managing work Chooses amount of product backlog items to be
implemented over a fixed time period
Problem solving The team decides how to solve product issues and decides
collectively how to implement functionality
Estimates work load The team collectively asses how much work a product
backlog item entails
Comparing the findings in Table 1 & 2, to the findings in Table 3 there is no indication that
the Product Owner performs tasks that concern leadership, other than maybe providing
vision of what should be accomplished. However this is a matter of perception, since the
only thing the Product Owner is concerned with is business value and the outcome of the
project can create business value without creating any significant change. Furthermore the
Scrum Master interestingly lacks many leadership traits as they are listed in Table 2.
Additionally the tasks self-organize and self-management were left out of Table 5, since they
lacked any form of a more detailed description of what these tasks entail other than the
existing descriptions of the other tasks in Table 5. The findings in Table 5 indicate no form
of tasks considered as leadership traits, as described in Table 2.
The combined comparisons between Tables 1 & 2 and Tables 3-5 indicate that Scrum, as
Schwaber describes it, does not concern itself much with leadership tasks. Hence not
surprisingly does Schwaber state that “All management in a project are divided among these
roles” [17, p. 26], referring to the three formal roles. However he does state in the first
chapter that “The Scrum Master provides leadership, guidance, and coaching” [17, p. 21],
but his elaborations in other parts of the book do not describe many leadership tasks. Arguing
that there are inconsistencies in implications of leadership used in Schwaber’s writings is

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not the concern of this literature review, so supportive answers were sought elsewhere. A
publication comparing Scrum theory and practice highlight the fact that Scrum does not have
processes that appropriately address team leadership [7]. The same publication admits Scrum
holds self-organization and coaching as important factors of success, but does not clearly
elaborate on how to implement these [7]. The comparison of the findings in this chapter and
the ones from previous chapters indicate the same conclusion. Scrum theory gives the tools
to implement project management and merely acknowledges that there must be leadership
implemented somewhere along the way in successful Scrum projects. However, reviewing
publications of field studies on Scrum projects might reveal something more.
6.2 Informal roles in Scrum
In need of analyzing what happens in self-organizing scrum teams and additionally trying to
answer the question “how do self-organizing agile teams organize themselves?” a
comprehensive study was conducted in New Zealand and India [2]. The research conducted
through Grounded Theory yielded a result of six different informal roles. These roles
according to the study should arguably be adapted in order to help the team self-organize,
since the study found that team members adapt one or more of these roles in order to help
the team self-organize. These roles and their description can be found in the table below.
Table 6 – Roles Facilitating Self Organizing Agile Teams [2, p. 4]
The column “played by” describes who in the self-organizing team acts the part of the
informal role. Agile Coach, Developer and Business Analyst are all formal roles in the team
structure. Agile coaches refers to Scrum Masters & XP Coaches and Business analyst refers

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to a team member that is not a developer [2]. The last column on the right refers to who the
role in question interacts with when acting the part, here senior management is someone in
the organization outside the team with more organizational authority.
Comparing Table 5 to the Table 1 & 2 one can find some similarities in terms used, such as
the Mentor role, which is fairly close to Coaching in Table 2. This would indicate that the
Mentor role is of the leadership type. Co-ordinator and Translator roles are clearly of the
facilitating nature. Both roles concern engagement and operative communication, making
these roles fall into the management category according to Table 1. The Champion role
clearly correlates with the leadership task that concerns improving labor relations. The
Promoters task is also clearly one of a motivational nature, even though the effective
outcome would be facilitating meetings. Without the customer feeling motivated to engage
there would be no facilitation. The Promoter task is thus a leadership task. Being a
Terminator does not seem to be a pleasant role. Even if one was to argue that the role
concerns people alignment, the task of removing team members is a staffing and resource
allocation task, both of the managerial nature. Moreover, even if the Agile Coach acting as
a Terminator is not the one making the decision about a team members removal, the
Terminator would be facilitating such communication and thus still making it a managerial
role.
To conclude, according to the findings of the study referenced in Table 5 the Agile Coach
holds only leadership roles except for the Terminator role. However the Agile Coach may
not have to act the part if there would be effective staffing, team assembly or people
alignment. All of these tasks prevent assembly of a team with different values or align the
different values within the team, thus avoiding conflicts that cannot be overcome. On the
other hand the team could collectively act as the Terminator by voting out the team member
that is causing trouble.
The article [2] did not provide clear answers to who would be preforming any of the other
leadership or management tasks. Additionally it should be noted that the studied Scrum
teams in the research paper [2], projects where the teams had customers and senior
management in their working environments.

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7. Discussion
7.1 Leadership in Agile self-organizing teams implementing Scrum
There is a clear lack of descriptive actions self-organizing teams need to take in order to
perform leadership. Agile descriptions of self-organizing teams only says leadership should
be distributed [7], but if the definition of leadership is a perspective dependent on each
individual as suggested by the leadership report [6], how can self-organizing teams know
what they are distributing? The answer to a question can arguably be found in the definitions
of self-managing teams and self-organizing teams. Self-organizing teams are arguably the
same as self-managing teams and the tasks they distribute are managerial tasks, not
leadership tasks.
How does this fit the description of the Scrum process? The PO is the only one allowed to
organize the tasks in the backlog [17]. In this case the team is still bound to an outsider
setting the goals or the vision if you will, supporting the view that a self-managing team
needs external leadership. On the other hand, if the PO is perceivably part of the team there
is no outsider setting the goals and thus the team is performing a leadership task.
Furthermore based on the findings of this literature review there is no role in self-organizing
agile teams, formally or informally, whose task is to actively inspire and motivate team
members other than the Agile Coach. This inspiring and motivating is the key actions taken
by leaders (not managers) to build trust according to the review of leadership studies in
chapter 3. However, the Agile Coach is not officially a part of the team, but rather a facilitator
that is supposed to leave the team alone as much as possible [25] [26]. Additionally there
are those like Schwaber [17] who still uses the word manager rather than leader to describe
the Scrum Master. These findings indicate that the Scrum Master or Agile Coach acts as an
external leader to an agile self-organizing team implementing Scrum.
An interesting remark is that there is no one who is responsible for seeking new talent to the
team or responsible for assembling a team. There was however the informal role whose
responsibility was to remove team members whose behavior was hurtful to the team [2],
however the role was supposedly carried out by the Agile Coach. Another aspect not
discussed in agile management is the fact that leadership is about relationships and if so, it

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is likely the Agile Coach develops a relationship with team members that balances the team.
In the case of Scrum, if one would then after a while remove the Scrum Master or just switch
it two a new one this should have a significant effect. In contrast, one could argue in this
case that Scrum Masters should not develop any relationships with the team in order to
enable the team to find its own way of balancing the team dynamics.
7.2 Criticism
Distinguishing between management and leadership can be extremely hurtful for an
organization if it is misinterpreted. It could translate to needing to change management when
the environment changes, thinking that leaders cannot be managers or managers cannot
become leaders [6]. The same philosophy could be applied to self-organizing teams; thinking
that self-organizing teams cannot employ both leadership and management at the same time
can be hurtful. However studies trying understand leadership and organization of self-
organizing teams [22] [21] [2] base their definition of self-organizing teams on studies that
state these teams to be self-managing teams [16] in the need of external leadership [13]. This
may lead to confusion especially within the software development field, since there is a clear
difference between self-managing systems and self-organizing systems [12]. The difference
being that self-organizing systems are capable of creating and executing their own tasks,
whereas self-managing systems need their execution tasks from an external source. This
might imply that one either would want to redefine the meaning of a self-organizing team or
one could maybe conduct future studies into teams that distribute leadership tasks within the
team, alongside management tasks and call these teams something new such as “self-
leading” teams.
There could be other understandings of self-organizing teams, likely based on publications
dated to more recent years. However these were overlocked and deemed outside of the scope
of this literature review since they did not come up with enough citations during the time
this literature review was conducted. The motivation for this literature review was to find
inconsistencies in the theories of self-organizing agile software development teams. Hence
this literature review might have picked the right articles to construct a valid case to prove a
point. Regardless the intentions of conducting this literature review one cannot disregard the
fact that the Scrum framework was clearly built on the notion that one needed self-managing

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teams instead of traditional project management. Additionally, in order to emphasize the
new type of role needed, one came up with the roles of Scrum Master and Agile Coach so
that one would not interpret the new roles as strong iconic leadership, even if these roles
actually employ leadership tasks as the ones described in Table 2.
8. Conclusion
This literature review aimed to define leadership in self-organizing agile teams
implementing Scrum. In order to do so there was a need to define leadership based on the
assumption that leadership and management are sets of different tasks. Furthermore, there
was a need to define self-organizing teams according publications outside of agile
methodologies enabling reflection on the definition of such teams implementing Scrum. In
addition, formal and informal roles in Scrum were presented in order to discuss the meaning
of leadership within the framework of Scrum.
The key difference between leadership and management is that management is a function,
whereas leadership is concerned with relationships and emotions [10]. Leadership in self-
organizing teams implementing Scrum is not completely performed within the self-
organizing teams. Leadership tasks are at least to some extent performed by the Agile Coach
or by the Product Owner, if not by the team itself depending on your point of view on
leadership. However, management can fully be performed and distributed within a self-
organizing team implementing Scrum. Additionally, according to studies outside the field of
agile software development, self-organizing teams are the same as self-managing teams [16]
[27]. Combining the findings from the two fields, one could thus argue that the use of the
term “self-managing” is a more descriptive for teams implementing Scrum.
The findings of the study call for future studies into self-organizing teams that may or may
not be employing leadership tasks listed in Table 2 distributed within the team. These would
be teams where team members motivate and inspire each other. Team members would
jointly create their vision and act as coaches to each other in different areas of expertise. The
team would also actively perform activities that induce trust between team members by the
teams own collective initiative. These teams would likely be found in environments where
there are few ties to any outside stake holders and the team is fairly small. It is hard to guess

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without further empirical research whether teams would act more efficiently if leadership
would be distributed alongside management. However, it is clear that teams need both
management and leadership whether it is external, internal, personified or distributed. In the
case of self-organizing agile teams implementing Scrum, external personified leadership is
combined with distributed internal management.

21. 21
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