  This paper presents an empirical study on how self- organized software teams
could attain high performance using agile and lean practices. In particular,
the paper qualitatively examines characteristics of high performance and self-
organization in one project team. The case under study is a customer-driven
student project, carried out to develop an alpha-version prototype. The paper
also studies how certain agile software practices aid in initialising
self-organization in the team. The main results indicate that self-organization
as supported by certain Agile and Lean practices helps teams in achieving
higher performance.
