Nils Brede Moe

Internal hackathons are widely used to drive innovation and collaboration in software companies, yet not all succeed. Many fall short due to low employee engagement. Why do some employees dive in, while others hold back? This article explores what drives and hinders engagement based on insights from five companies practicing regular hackathons. Using Social-Cognitive Theory, we show that engagement depends on two key beliefs: one’s ability to contribute (self-efficacy) and the value of participation (outcome expectations). These drivers are not arbitrary; they are predictable, and thus manageable. By understanding the psychology behind engagement, organizers can create hackathons that help more employees to feel confident and inspired to participate. We offer practical guidance to make your next hackathon truly engaging.

Agile teams are rapidly adopting AI agents in everyday work, reporting increased productivity and faster feedback cycles. Simultaneously, the integration of AI raises new socio-technical issues concerning coordination, trust, roles, quality, and governance. To better understand these challenges, we organized the first International Human–AI Collaboration in Agile Teams workshop at XP 2026, with more than 40 participants from academia and industry. This paper reports on the outcomes of the workshop, synthesizing insights from interactive group discussions and collaborative analysis. The findings highlight how AI reshapes agile teamwork and workflows, introducing new human–AI collaboration patterns, shifting skills and roles, and raising challenges related to leadership, governance, and value assessment. A key emerging concept is cognitive debt, referring to the gradual loss or weakening of shared understanding in teams relying on AI-generated outputs. Based on these findings, we present a research agenda structured around eight key themes, including teamwork, workflows, autonomy, skills, value measurement, and adoption practices. The results emphasize that integrating AI into agile software development teams is not only a technical challenge but a socio-technical transformation requiring new practices, competencies, and organizational support.

This paper presents empirical findings from a survey of 172 IT professionals in Oslo, Norway, working in organizations where agile methods are widely used in both private and public sectors . The study explores how hybrid work is experienced and enacted in a high-trust, flexibility-oriented environment. Our results indicate a strong employee preference for flexible work models that allow autonomy in time and location. Remote work is widely used, sometimes even substituting for sick leave during mild illness. At the same time, the respondents report that office attendance is important for social connections. The data further reveal high levels of trust in colleagues’ effectiveness when working remotely, with low concern about misuse of home office privileges. Some organizations have introduced mandatory office days, often with the stated goal of strengthening culture and workplace community. Overall, the hybrid setups are perceived positively and are not seen as a major factor in employee turnover. Instead, career progression and compensation remain the primary drivers of job change. These findings offer insights into how hybrid work practices are integrated into agile ways of working in a Scandinavian context.

Onboarding is an important activity to integrate new employees into an organization as soon as possible, in order to support them in becoming productive. Whereas onboarding has traditionally been done primarily onsite, it is now increasingly common for new software professionals to be onboarded either fully remotely or partially remotely in hybrid settings. We ask how software professionals develop a sense of belonging through the onboarding process. Using a conceptual framework from the general onboarding literature, we report on case studies of onboarding of software professionals in three different settings on the hybrid continuum, drawing on a dataset comprising interviews with 46 informants, Slack logs, observations, and company documents. In Case 1, we focus on the onboarding of consultant developers in two divisions: in one division, the consultants work internally with the consulting organization. In the other division, the consultants are placed with clients. In Case 2, we study the onboarding of software professionals in a hybrid setting, and in Case 3, we study the onboarding of a new team of remote developers based in Portugal, who joined a company in Norway. We extend the literature on onboarding of software professionals by shedding light on how software organizations conduct onboarding in different types of hybrid settings. We extend and refine the initial conceptual model, and formalize it through the development of a series of propositions. We then discuss a number of recommendations for software organizations who wish to onboard new software professionals in different settings on the hybrid continuum.

Agile at scale introduces persistent tensions as organizations attempt to balance autonomy, coordination, and control across teams and layers. Some tensions are paradoxes, which are persistent contradictions in which both sides matter. Drawing on a qualitative case study of MarketCorp, a multinational marketplace company, we explore how paradoxes manifest in a large-scale agile context and how leaders respond. Interviews with 15 top managers and reflective conversations with 60 employees reveal three paradoxes: centralization vs. autonomy, internal vs. external focus, and product vs. project approaches. We explored two approaches for designing facilitated dialogue around paradoxes in leadership teams. The study highlights the importance of recognizing, normalizing, and collaboratively managing paradoxes and offers practical guidance for large-scale agile organizations, demonstrating that paradoxes can provide a valuable focus for continuous improvement and strengthen agile learning practices.

Context: Pair programming (PP) is more relevant than ever. As modern systems grow in complexity, knowledge sharing and collaboration across teams have become essential. However, despite well-documented benefits of PP, its adoption remains inconsistent across software teams. Objective: This study aims to understand the factors that facilitate or hinder team members' adoption as well as lasting engagement in PP. Method: We have conducted an exploratory single-case study in a mature agile company in Norway. We collected data through two rounds of interviews with team members in different roles and performed a thematic analysis of the interviews. Results: Our key finding is that multiple factors, related to the perceptions of how PP contributes to daily work, efforts associated with engaging in PP sessions, company and team attitudes, resources, infrastructure, and task characteristics, affect PP engagement. Conclusion: Long-term engagement in PP requires expected benefits with the practice being confirmed in firsthand experiences. Adapting the practice to each unique team, with insights drawn from collective learning, is also beneficial. Our findings will be beneficial for software practitioners seeking to make PP an integrated part of their team's workflow.