Prototypical Leadership in Agile Software Development
Paper in proceeding, 2025

Leadership in agile teams is a collective responsibility where team members share leadership work based on expertise and skills. However, the understanding of leadership in this context is limited. This study explores the under-researched area of prototypical leadership, aiming to understand if and how leaders who are perceived as more representative of the team are more effective leaders. Qualitative interviews were conducted with eleven members of six agile software teams in five Swedish companies from various industries and sizes. In this study, the effectiveness of leadership was perceived as higher when it emerged from within the team or when leaders aligned with the group. In addition, leaders in managerial roles that align with the team’s shared values and traits were perceived as more effective, contributing to overall team success.

management

Leadership

Prototypicality

Prototypical leadership

Agile teams

Author

Jina Dawood

Student at Chalmers

Lucas Gren

Chalmers, Computer Science and Engineering (Chalmers), Interaction Design and Software Engineering

Getinge Group

University of Gothenburg

Lecture Notes in Computer Science

0302-9743 (ISSN) 1611-3349 (eISSN)

Vol. 15452 LNCS 189-203
9783031783852 (ISBN)

25th International Conference on Product-Focused Software Process Improvement, PROFES 2024
Tartu, Estonia,

Subject Categories (SSIF 2025)

Business Administration

DOI

10.1007/978-3-031-78386-9_13

More information

Latest update

11/17/2025