Although much is known about the concept of technical debt in software development, less is known about its social counterpart, also known as social debt. Social debt refers to future consequences of decisions related to people and their interactions. Omissions in social interactions or reduction of communication can foster social debt – and in turn result in negative outcomes in the long run. In this paper, we present which factors drive and mitigate social debt in agile software development (ASD) teams. Utilizing a qualitative approach, we derive insights from two case study organizations. Surprisingly, we found a higher number of factors increasing social debt than those that have a decreasing effect.

Agile software development (ASD) strongly relies on social interaction and teamwork. Team processes and agile practices adopted by team members play an important part for the outcome of software development projects. Agile practices promise teams to be able to respond to change by granting them autonomy. Existing studies, however, imply that these projects can benefit from different elements of control. Our objective is to improve our understanding of how to enact control in agile teams and how these control mechanisms influence team autonomy and team performance. In this paper, we present our findings from four case studies conducted within two insurance companies and two software development firms. We found that it is not a question of ‘what’ controls should be exercised, but rather ‘how’ controls are implemented in practice. Our results prompt to the need for further studies on control mechanisms in ASD.