The Influence of the Participation on Trello on TeamWork Quality, Team Performance and Team Members' Success of Bachelor Students Completing a Project in Agile Teams

Even though agile principles are widespread and effective in managing projects in many fields, the software applications based on these principles, e.g. Trello, are not studied in-depth. This study’s goal was to analyze the influence of participation in Trello on teamwork quality, team performance, and team members’ success of bachelor students completing a project in agile teams. The research process involved surveying 251 bachelor management students in 50 agile teams and examining the data of their usage of Trello. The data was collected in English using two questionnaires with 4 and 10 questions respectively, and a sum of 20 types of actions in Trello was calculated for each team. Shapiro-Wilk test, Cronbach’s alpha calculation, confirmatory factor analysis, and Structural Equation Modeling were performed to analyze the survey results. As for the participation in Trello, descriptive statistics were used. This study found Trello usage to have a positive influence on team performance and team members’ success. A possible interpretation of this finding is that the software applications designed for project management impact productivity and effectiveness of agile teams. However, participation in Trello did not have a positive effect on teamwork quality of the agile teams. Structural Equation Modeling also revealed that teamwork quality was found to influence team members’ work satisfaction and learning positively but did not influence team performance. One explanation for this is a rather short time frame designated for the project during the HRM course, and relative inexperience in project management of study’s participants. Keywords: Trello; project management; teamwork quality; team performance; team members’ success, agile teams