Women in Agile: The Impact of Organizational Support for Women’s Advancement on Teamwork Quality and Performance in Agile Software Development Teams

In this research we investigate how organizational support for women’s advancement and gender diversity as a headcount is related to teamwork quality and team performance based upon Hoegl and Gemuenden’s teamwork quality model (TWQ). Using an online survey we obtained data from 77 professionals working in agile software development teams. The results show that organizational support for women’s advancement has a positive impact on all TWQ dimensions, while gender diversity expressed as an equal headcount number has only a positive impact on coordination and balance of member contributions in our data set. Further, in line with previous research, our data shows that all dimensions of the TWQ model have a positive impact on team performance in agile software development teams. Our findings indicate that an organization’s mindset towards gender diversity has a stronger effect on team performance than gender diversity as a headcount number only.