Organizational and Psychological Aspects of Human Resource Management in Agile Companies

Abstract

The term “Agile management” is applied to an interative, incremental method of managing the design and building activities of engineering that aim to provide a new product or service development in a highly flexible and interactive way. Agile philosophy describes a set of values and principles that are based on collaborative effort of self-organizing cross-functional teams. Nowadays Agile approach is widely used not only in soft ware engineering, that is why it requires the introduction of methods that are different from traditional management. The work is of an interdisciplinary nature, combining the knowledge of economic and social psychology with the needs of contemporary management. The work is based on the analysis of in-depth interviews with the representatives of two Russian IT-companies. Interviews were based on the AMO-model, conclusions were based on the observation method. As our study shows, it is impossible to single out universal methods for implementing Agile management techniques, despite the existence of guidelines. Examples of successful implementation prove that the choice of management techniques should be based on the analysis of the complex of organizational and psychological problems existing in each company. However, these findings are not without limitations. The convenience data used for the current study was collected from independent research centers. The cross-sectional nature of this research is another important limitation. The hypothesized model of optimization should be tested in a longitudinal study, in different settings or concrete organization as well. Further research that considers these aspects would provide a more comprehensive understanding of motivation expectations of Russian employees. It is necessary to study and theoretically comprehend problems of Agile implementation from the standpoint of psychology, since this will allow solving personnel management tasks effectively, e.g. to develop criteria for the selection of personnel capable of working in teams; implement measures that increase individual and group responsibility as well as initiation in decision-making. Due to the innovative approach, this study is of a great value to the research field of HRM and Agile management.