Less Distress with a Scrum Mistress?: On the Impact of Females in Agile Software Development Teams

Since the appearance of the agile development approach, more emphasis was put on human factors in software development. "The agile approach reflects the notion that development environments should support communication and information sharing". This perfectly fits to the women's management style which "is centered on communication and building positive relationships". In agile teams this female management style seems to perfectly fit for the role and tasks of a Scrum master who is responsible for a "working Scrum" which entails to ensure good communication and good teamwork. We argue in favor of this hypothesis by presenting results of an exploratory qualitative study of a students' software project. Our results show that the female management style in fact perfectly matches the role of a Scrum master. The female management style promotes team spirit and a constructive, communicative working atmosphere.