  The ability to self-organise is posited to be a fundamental requirement for
successful agile teams. In particular, self-organising teams are said to be
crucial in agile globally distributed software development (AGSD) settings,
where distance exacerbates team issues. We used contextual analysis to study
the specific interaction behaviours and enacted roles of practitioners working
in multiple AGSD teams. Our results show that the teams studied were extremely
task focussed, and those who occupied team lead or programmer roles were
central to their teams' self-organisation. These findings have implications for
AGSD teams, and particularly for instances when programmers - or those
occupying similar non-leadership positions - may not be willing to accept such
responsibilities. We discuss the implications of our findings for information
system development (ISD) practice.
