Integrating Psychological Well-being Practices into Scrum for Distributed Software Teams: A Study Based on ISO 45003 Practices

Abstract

The new challenges presented by remote working in Agile software development teams are not being addressed in most traditional models of process improvement. This study in vestigated how well organizations are practicing what is identified in ISO 45003 guidelines for managing psychological health at work, in the context of distributed Agile environ ments. The survey was administered to 10 software companies using a hybrid model of remote/hybrid Agile teams. Each question asked in the survey had direct correlation to specific clauses identified in ISO 45003. Analysis indicated there were some consistent strong points in areas such as communication and risk identification, however there were significant gaps found in many of the support mechanisms including policy and leader ship commitment, resources and support, emergency help and monitoring. Based on these findings, we propose a practical set of process improvement recommendations tailored for integration into Agile frameworks (e.g., SAFe, LeSS) and compliant with ISO standards. The goal is to embed psychological well-being as a core component of Agile and capabil ity models in remote work settings. This paper contributes to bridging the gap between psychosocial risk management and Agile process maturity in globally distributed software development.