Developer Well-being, Team Dynamics, and Organizational Sustainability in Fintech Solution Development
2026 (English)In: FSE Companion - Proc. ACM Int. Conf. Found. Softw. Eng., ACM Publications, 2026, p. 1507-1512Conference paper, Published paper (Refereed)
Abstract [en]
Large-scale agile (LSA) frameworks are increasingly adopted by financial institutions to balance rapid digital innovation with complex regulatory requirements. However, the systemic impact of these frameworks on developer cognitive capacity, psychological safety, and long-term socio-technical sustainability remains under-researched. This paper presents exploratory case study of a Swedish financial services organization navigating a Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) transformation. We conducted fifteen semi-structured interviews across multiple organizational roles and analyzed the data using reflexive thematic analysis. Our analysis identify six recurring socio-technical tensions shaping developer experience and team functioning. Rather than representing isolated challenges, these tensions form an interacting system. We synthesize these findings to explain how coordination intensity, governance ambiguity, and delivery pressure recursively reinforce cognitive overload, defensive team behavior, and socio-technical debt accumulation. We argue that developers well-being is a leading indicator of socio-technical sustainability, not a peripheral human resources concern.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
ACM Publications, 2026. p. 1507-1512
Keywords [en]
agile, fintech, psychological safety, SAFe, socio-technical debt, team dynamics, Agile manufacturing systems, Human resource management, Information management, Information systems, Information use, Large-scales, Organisational, Scaled agile framework, Sociotechnical, Technical debts, Well being, Accident prevention
National Category
Computer and Information Sciences
Research subject
Computer Science
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-111978DOI: 10.1145/3803437.3805549Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-105045836477ISBN: 9798400726361 (print)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:kau-111978DiVA, id: diva2:2092003
Conference
FSE Companion 2026 - Proceedings of the 34th ACM International Conference on the Foundations of Software Engineering
2026-08-132026-08-132026-08-13Bibliographically approved