2026-10-13T01:46:16Z https://api.figshare.com/v2/oai

oai:figshare.com:article/30175156 2026-09-21T13:21:36Z category_29203 item_type_3 month_year_09_2026

Psychological Safety, Team Reflexivity and Community Smells Refactoring in Agile Retrospectives: A Survey-Based Structural Equation Model Carlos Dantas (23723424) Software engineering not elsewhere classified Retrospective Meeting agile software engineering PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY Team reflexivity retrospective meeting quality Community smells community smells refactoring Social Debt community smells mitigation community smells identification <p dir="ltr">Retrospective meetings are important for continuous improvement in agile teams. Different aspects can be highlighted during these meetings, including sociotechnical issues such as community smells. Previous studies explored the content and quality of agile retrospectives, indicating that community smells are addressed in these meetings, and their quality is influenced by psychological safety and team reflexivity. However, a quantitative investigation simultaneously assessing the relationships among all these constructs and measuring the strength of their effects remains lacking. In this paper, we investigate the influence of Psychological Safety and Team Reflexivity on Retrospective Meeting Quality and their subsequent connection with Community Smells Refactoring. For this purpose, an online survey was carried out with 149 practitioners from software development teams; the collected data was subject to Structural Equation Modeling. The data analysis established a strong positive relationship between Psychological Safety and Team Reflexivity. Furthermore, the study confirmed a significant, direct, and positive effect of Team Reflexivity on Community Smells Refactoring. This core relationship is influenced by the Retrospective Meeting Quality, which plays a dual role: it acts as a partial mediator, indirectly transferring the effect of reflexivity to refactoring, and also as a moderator, strengthening the effect of reflexivity on the community smell refactoring. These findings reinforce the role of reflection activities in translating psychological safety into tangible improvements against socio-technical issues, demonstrating a positive influence on Community Smells Refactoring. The Retrospective Meeting is identified as an important setting to promote psychological safety and exercise team reflexivity, positively contributing not only socio-technical aspects but also overall team effectiveness.</p> 2025-09-22T02:46:34Z Dataset Dataset 10.6084/m9.figshare.30175156.v5 https://figshare.com/articles/dataset/Supplementary_Materials_of_The_Influences_of_Retrospective_Meeting_in_the_Community_Smells_Refactoring/30175156 CC BY 4.0