Abstract: Abstract Today’s organizations operate in an incredibly volatile and uncertain world, with a diverse set of challenges, such as providing innovative solutions to meet new customer needs and rapidly changing market dynamics. Successfully navigating these challenges requires a level of organizational agility to not only survive, but also thrive. As a result, many organizations have implemented various types of interventions. One of the interventions popularly used in practice is the concept of Agile project management development, which aims to improve the organizational ability to respond to these challenges quickly and effectively through the use of Agile teams and business practices (Marnewick & Marnewick, 2020; Werder & Maedche, 2018). For example, over 70% of software development organizations have adopted interventions based on Agile project development, particularly in the use of Agile teams and technical practices (Marinho, et. al., 2019; Singh, et.al., 2014). However, the use of Agile teams has been also extended to non-software areas (Denning, 2012; Papadakis & Tsironis, 2018). In spite of this widespread use of Agile teams, the definition of Agile teams remains ambiguous. Since the field and concept of Agile teams are still emerging without integrative definitions, the scope or boundary of the field is not clear and sound theories are absent (Gandomani, et. al., 2020; Jalali, et. al., 2014). Scholars implement different definitions of Agile teams or do not define the term at all. Similar issues exist in practice, with a variety of Agile frameworks and methods, each defining Agile teams and practices differently. Additionally, organizations implementing Agile teams may not provide the appropriate hiring, training, and coaching to ensure that Agile teams meet even the definitions that are available. Without a firm definition, discovering its competencies or developing a competency model is meaningless. Consequently, these unclear foundations create difficulties for developing Agile team literature further as a building cannot be built higher when the foundations are not firm. The intent of this project is to examine definitions of Agile teams and explore historical and current themes to gain insight into how the concept has been approached in the literature to date. A systematic review of the literature related to Agile team definitions was conducted. Given the emergent nature of the topic, search databases included literature across HRD, business, psychology, and technology. Next, a thematic analysis was conducted to identify major themes over the last twenty years since Agile was formalized. Key themes include definitions of Agile teams as 1) a set of characteristics that follow an Agile mindset; 2) specifically focused on the use of Agile processes and practices; and 3) teams using Agile practices to achieve desired outcomes. Discussion and critique of each theme is presented, along with a proposed definition. Finally, implications for future research and theory-building, as well as practitioners, are discussed. A clear definition of an Agile team provides the necessary foundation for future theory-building and research with an integrated path forward, offering guidance to many organizations seeking to increase organizational agility by using Agile teams. Keywords: Agile teams, organizational agility
