Are team personality and climate related to satisfaction and software quality? Aggregating results from a twice replicated experiment

ContextResearch into software engineering teams focuses on human and social team factors. Social psychology deals with the study of team formation and has found that personality factors and group processes such as team climate are related to team effectiveness. However, there are only a handful of empirical studies dealing with personality and team climate and their relationship to software development team effectiveness.ObjectiveWe present aggregate results of a twice replicated quasi-experiment that evaluates the relationships between personality, team climate, product quality and satisfaction in software development teams.MethodOur experimental study measures the personalities of team members based on the Big Five personality traits (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism) and team climate factors (participative safety, support for innovation, team vision and task orientation) preferences and perceptions. We aggregate the results of the three studies through a meta-analysis of correlations. The study was conducted with students.ResultsThe aggregation of results from the baseline experiment and two replications corroborates the following findings. There is a positive relationship between all four climate factors and satisfaction in software development teams. Teams whose members score highest for the agreeableness personality factor have the highest satisfaction levels. The results unveil a significant positive correlation between the extraversion personality factor and software product quality. High participative safety and task orientation climate perceptions are significantly related to quality.ConclusionsFirst, more efficient software development teams can be formed heeding personality factors like agreeableness and extraversion. Second, the team climate generated in software development teams should be monitored for team member satisfaction. Finally, aspects like people feeling safe giving their opinions or encouraging team members to work hard at their job can have an impact on software quality. Software project managers can take advantage of these factors to promote developer satisfaction and improve the resulting product.     

机载雷达软件项目管理的实施策略

在机载雷达的研制过程中,软件正逐渐起到越来越重要的作用。为提高软件产品质量,研制能力成熟度模型(CMMI)已得到大量应用。分析了机载雷达软件项目的特点,针对这些特点阐述了如何进行相应的项目管理,通过采用适合的软件生命周期模型和对多软件配置项(CSCI)进行集成管理等措施,从而实现CMMI的本地化。     

Exploring Differences between Inventors,Champions, Implementers and Innovators in Creating and Developing New Products in Large,Mature Firms

This exploratory research investigates nine individuals participating as specialists in different phases of the invention and new product development (NPD) process in one organization. In‐depth interviews were conducted with these individuals, as well as with 17 of their managers and co‐workers, adding an external perspective about them. These nine individuals participated in four different divisions of labour in the innovation process: inventors who focus on scientific and technical invention prior to concept development, champions who are most adept at selling acceptance of projects into the organization, implementers who focus on facilitating the project through the firm's formal development process, and innovators who operate across all three phases of invention, acceptance and implementation. The research finds differences in personality, perspective, knowledge base, motivation, and attitude toward politics that seem to be associated with these different specialist types. These differences lead to implications for the types of projects for which they might best be suited, as well as for how they might best be managed.     

Emphasizing human capabilities in software development

People are a critical software development issue, and the human dimension can be even more important than the technical. An important part of human resources management is assigning people to development roles. This process isn't just crucial for generating productive teams; it can also help software organizations develop systematic long-term competence. Despite the importance of identifying the right people for roles, little is known about doing this properly. Integrating managerial experience with a procedure for identifying the person best suited for each role can help improve human resources management and long-term career development. We've defined a human capability-based procedure to supplement managerial activities for supporting personnel development and human resources management. Along with occupational psychologists and software managers, we've applied our procedure in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).     

The links between human error diversity and software diversity: Implications for fault diversity seeking

Software diversity is known to improve fault tolerance in N-version software systems by independent development. As the leading cause of software faults, human error is considered an important factor in diversity seeking. However, there is little scientific research focusing on how to seek software fault diversity based on human error mechanisms. A literature review was conducted to extract factors that may differentiate people with respect to human error-proneness. In addition, we constructed a conceptual model of the links between human error diversity and software diversity. An experiment was designed to validate the hypotheses, in the form of a programming contest, accompanied by a survey of cognitive styles and personality traits. One hundred ninety-two programs were submitted for the identical problem, and 70 surveys were collected. Code inspection revealed 23 faults, of which 10 were coincident faults. The results show that personality traits seems not effective predictors for fault diversity as a whole model, whereas cognitive styles and program measurements moderately account for the variation of fault density. The results also show causal relations between performance levels and coincident faults: coincident faults are unlikely to occur at skill-based performance level; the coincident faults introduced in rule-based performances show a high probability of occurrence, and the coincident faults introduced in knowledge-based performances are shaped by the content and formats of the task itself. Based on these results, we have proposed a model to seek software diversity and prevent coincident faults.     

Personality traits and echo chambers on facebook

In online social networks, users tend to select information that adhere to their system of beliefs and to form polarized groups of like minded people. Polarization as well as its effects on online social interactions have been extensively investigated. Still, the relation between group formation and personality traits remains unclear. A better understanding of the cognitive and psychological determinants of online social dynamics might help to design more efficient communication strategies and to challenge the digital misinformation threat. In this work, we focus on users commenting posts published by US Facebook pages supporting scientific and conspiracy-like narratives, and we classify the personality traits of those users according to their online behavior. We show that different and conflicting communities are populated by users showing similar psychological profiles, and that the dominant personality model is the same in both scientific and conspiracy echo chambers. Moreover, we observe that the permanence within echo chambers slightly shapes users' psychological profiles. Our results suggest that the presence of specific personality traits in individuals lead to their considerable involvement in supporting narratives inside virtual echo chambers.     

社交媒体中的人格计算研究综述

人格是一种心理结构，旨在用少量稳定和可衡量的个体特征来解释人类的各种跨情境行为。以往测量人格主要依靠标准化心理测验，但因大规模实施标准化心理测量的难操作性，它的使用范围有所限制。随着科技的快速发展，社交媒体的普遍化，计算机领域有学者尝试结合计算算法和“大五”因素人格理论，借助个体在社交媒体上留下的线索推测个体人格特质，从而产生了人格计算领域。这一新兴领域主要利用个体在社交平台上留下的社交痕迹理解、预测、分析他们的行为，从而对用户人格类型做出具有一定准确性的判断。人格计算技术的应用对智能医疗、个性化服务定制等领域具有重要意义。通过总结人格计算领域近十年，在利用社交平台上的用户线索推断人格的最新进展，来阐明当前这一领域的研究现状、研究不足以及未来待研究方向。     

Effectively utilizing project,product and process knowledge

Improving project management, product development and engineering processes is for many companies crucial to survive in a fast changing environment. However, these activities are rarely integrated well due to the diversity of stakeholders with individual knowledge about projects, products and processes. This case study shows how Alcatel-Lucent over time achieved effective interaction of engineering processes, tools and people on the basis of a knowledge-centric product life-cycle management (PLM). Starting from identifying project, product and process knowledge, we show how they can be effectively integrated for best possible usage across the enterprise. The case study provides insight into how to best embark on PLM and how to effectively integrate product development with supportive tools. It describes how the concepts can be transferred to software engineering teams and IT departments in other companies. Concrete results from several product lines, such as efficiency improvement and better global development underline the business value.     

Personality traits and effectiveness of presentation of product information in e-business systems

Consumer interaction with product information is one of the critical components in business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce environments. Online consumers' characteristics can be expected to play an important role when designing how product information is presented in such e-commerce environments. We suggest that online consumers' personality traits impact effectiveness of the presentation of product information on e-commerce sites and the extent to which the various e-commerce environments are effective. In this article, we propose and empirically validate relationships among online consumers' personality traits, product information presentation richness and on-line consumer behaviour in e-commerce environments. Results show that effectiveness of product information presentation varies by online consumers' psychological types, and that rich product information presentation significantly influences the online buying behaviour of intuitive types, and feeling types, rather than sensing and thinking types. Discussion of the results and their implications for theory and practice as well as limitations and future research directions are presented.     

Responsive inclusive design (RiD): a new model for inclusive software development

The design and development of technological solutions based on software for all types of people, including people with disabilities, is still a pending issue in most software application development projects today. Situations like the 2020 pandemic drastically reflect how people with disabilities tend to be left outside the application design and construction guidelines. There are multiple initiatives and previous works that advocate user involvement from the beginning of the project; however, in this work, we go a step further by presenting a model for designing and constructing software applications (RiD—Responsive inclusive Design) defined for inclusive software. RiD extends the involvement of the user with disabilities to the entire software life cycle, in different roles, and taking into account the changing nature of the user profile in the evolution of the product. This article also presents the EDICO case study, an accessible and inclusive scientific editor for the Spanish National Organization of the Blind (ONCE), which was successfully implemented applying the RiD principles.

     

软件测试的10个认识误区

随着计算机应用领域的不断扩大,软件产品已经渗透到人类生活的各个环节,软件开发组织越来越认识到软件质量的重要性。软件测试是软件工程中必不可少的一个环节,它作为发现软件中错误和缺陷的一种主要手段,已经引起了软件产品用户和软件开发人员越来越多的关注。但是人们对软件项目的测试工作常常存在一些认识上的误区。本文探讨并总结了这些认识上的误区。     

软件测试的10个认识误区

随着计算机应用领域的不断扩大。软件产品已经渗透到人类生活的各个环节，软件开发组织越来越认识到软件质量的重要性。软件测试是软件工程中必不可少的一个环节，它作为发现软件中错误和缺陷的一种主要手段，已经引起了软件产品用户和软件开发人员越来越多的关注，，但是人们对软件项目的测试工作常常存在一些认识上的误区。本文探讨并总结了这些认识上的误区。     

A Lexical Approach to Study Computer Games and Game Play Experience via Online Reviews

This article proposes a revised lexical approach to understand characteristics of computer games and user experience in game play by analyzing online game reviews. The lexical approach was originally used by psychologists to study personality traits. It was based on a lexical hypothesis stating that personality traits are reflected in the adjectives people have been using to describe personality over a long time. A factor analysis was then conducted to identify the patterns of personality related adjectives (i.e., personality traits). The argument here is that game players have used natural languages to describe computer games and their experiences over time and that the most important characteristics of computer games and game play experience would be reflected in player language. Therefore, the traits of computer games and user experience during game play can be studied by examining the adjectives used by players in online reviews. Based on 696,801 reviews downloaded from three major game websites, the lexical approach was adapted to analyze textual content pertaining to computer games. In two consecutive studies, the most important factors concerning traits of computer games and game play experience were discovered and analyzed. The implications of the revised lexical approach and findings from this project were discussed.     

小团队结对编程实践研究和重构

结对编程是两个软件开发者在一台电脑前一起工作的一种编程实践,是极限编程方法的基础。对于软件产品的开发,人的知识是项目成功的重要因素。在组织的软件过程改进中,合适地引入结对编程,有利于知识的共享并营造团队合作的氛围,进而改善产品质量和缩短完成时间。不同规模的组织采用的软件过程的不同,对结对编程的引入会有不同的影响,所以在实践中结对编程的重构是必需的。基于小型组织和敏捷过程的项目实践,给出了一个切合实际的结对编程重构方案,进而提高小团队的生产效率。     

Formal model for assigning human resources to teams in software projects

Context

Human resources play a critical role in software project success. However, people are still the least formalized factor in today’s process models. Generally, people are assigned to roles and project teams are formed on the basis of project leaders’ experience of people, constraints (e.g. availability) and skill requirements. Yet this process has to take multiple factors into account. Few works in the literature model this process. Most of these are informal proposals focusing on the individual assignment of people to project tasks and do not consider other aspects like team formation as a whole.

Objective

In this paper we formulate a formal model for assigning human resources to software project teams. Additionally, we describe the key results of the knowledge management process enacted to output the elements of the model.

Method

The model elements were identified using the Delphi expert consultation method and applying psychological tests. The proposed model was implemented in a software tool and validated on two software development organization assignment scenarios.

Results

We built a formal model for the process of assigning human resources to software project teams. This model takes into account as many factors as possible and aids the assignment of individuals to project roles, as well as the formation of the team as a whole.We found that the rules that were identified to form software development project teams are useful. From the tests we found that model implementation was feasible (all the executions of the implemented problem-solving algorithms output feasible solutions in response times that can be considered as acceptable).

Conclusion

Using the Delphi method we were able to propose software project roles and competences. Psychological tests and data mining tools identified useful rules for forming software project teams. These were used to build a formal model. This model was built into a tool that returns role assignments in acceptable response times. This decision support tool helps managers assign people to roles and to form teams. Using the tool, project leaders can flexibly evaluate different team make-ups, taking into account several factors, as well as different constraints and objectives.     

Staffing a software project: A constraint satisfaction and optimization-based approach

Software development is a people intensive activity. The abilities possessed by developers are strongly related to process productivity and final product quality. Thus, one of the most important decisions to be made by a software project manager is how to properly staff the project. However, staffing software projects is not a simple task. There are many alternatives to ponder, several developer-to-activity combinations to evaluate, and the manager may have to choose a team from a larger set of available developers, according to the project and organizational needs. Therefore, to perform the staffing activity with ad hoc procedures can be very difficult and can lead the manager to choose a team that is not the best for a given situation.     

Important characteristics of software development team members: an empirical investigation using Repertory Grid

An information system is typically developed by a team of information systems (IS) professionals. Research shows that teams staffed with the right people are more likely to be effective and efficient. There is a paucity of study that examines the important traits of IS professionals in team contexts. The objective of this research is to identify and understand the important characteristics of good team members in software development projects. We applied an established psychological technique (Repertory Grid) to guide our interviews with 21 experienced IS professionals, who have had extensive experience in software development teams. The comprehensive list of important characteristics was analysed qualitatively using open coding method of grounded theory. Fifty‐nine unique characteristics were identified and classified into eight categories. Among them, attitude/motivation, knowledge, interpersonal/communication skills, and working/cognitive ability were perceived by research participants to be the most important categories. Our study provides a context‐specific (i.e. software development team) evaluation of important characteristics of IS professionals. The results have significant implications for IS recruiting, IS training, IS staffing, and IS human resource management. Our study also supplements the research on management of IS development teams.     

Motivated humans for reliable software products

This paper focuses on the software engineer, as opposed to some software engineering discipline. The author's worldwide experience in software development has resulted in concluding that the vast majority of problems encountered while developing software are more people oriented rather than technology based. Therefore, for there to be any improvements in the reliability of software, it may be wise to revisit some of the people issues, otherwise, even the best methods, tools and techniques will not make an impact on the software development process so as to result in higher levels of software quality. Many are the problems which the software engineer is faced with while trying to piece together the complex information systems that the current global market dictates. Lack of office space and engineer concentration, unpaid overtime, non-productive meeting cultures, performance appraisals and absence of team work all contribute to the demotivation of the software engineer. Trying to introduce a new tool or a new technique to a demotivated staff is simply a waste of time. Thus, it is of paramount importance to realize that in the labour intensive software development world, the focus must first be on the human factor. Basic human nature has not changed over the years, therefore, the author sought out solutions from the past regarding the management of people, so as to be applied today in the development of software. This paper concludes with a ‘euphoria quadrant’ so as to provide a simple means for software producing units to gauge their management style and their overall working environment.     

A Characterisation Schema for Software Testing Techniques

One of the major problems within the software testing area is how to get a suitable set of cases to test a software system. This set should assure maximum effectiveness with the least possible number of test cases. There are now numerous testing techniques available for generating test cases. However, many are never used, and just a few are used over and over again. Testers have little (if any) information about the available techniques, their usefulness and, generally, how suited they are to the project at hand upon, which to base their decision on which testing techniques to use. This paper presents the results of developing and evaluating an artefact (specifically, a characterisation schema) to assist with testing technique selection. When instantiated for a variety of techniques, the schema provides developers with a catalogue containing enough information for them to select the best suited techniques for a given project. This assures that the decisions they make are based on objective knowledge of the techniques rather than perceptions, suppositions and assumptions.     

Intelligent agent characterization and uncertainty management with fuzzy set theory: a tool to support early supplier integration

This research performed an analysis of the existing categories for agent classification and characterization. The methodology developed fuzzy set theory based intelligent agents designed to promote integration of suppliers into the early stages of product development. The first stage in the project personified the anticipated agents by giving them roles that correlated with humanistic tendencies or professions. The project produced a multidimensional profile for agents by providing an analysis of three personality traits: aggressiveness, attractiveness, and vulnerability. The value associated with each of these traits is obtained through different functions which consider the degree of anticipated interaction between the agent, other agents, and the external environment. Further, the types of uncertainty associated with decision making are identified and assigned. The personality traits are used to describe the expected behavior of the agent and are assigned at the initiation o f a given task. Conversely, the measures of uncertainty are invoked at the completion of the task to provide a series of metrics related to the quality of information or task performed. The developed generic fuzzy intelligent agent model was programmed into two of the types of agents using JAVA. The agents successfully communicated with each other while permitting examination of the uncertainty. The result of the methodology is the creation of a frame that can be used to develop multiple fuzzy agents. Further, this research presents one of the first instantiations of a fuzzy agent. Finally, a hypothetical application of these agents is proposed to support architectural innovation in product development. This example promotes early supplier integration into the product development phase through the use of electronic communication and management of the interactions through intelligent agents. The details of computer programming are left for presentation in a succeeding article.