Investigating the Impact of Team Formation by Introversion/Extraversion in Software Projects

Year 2018, Volume: 6 Issue: 2, 132 - 140, 30.04.2018

Vahid Garousı Ayça Tarhan

https://doi.org/10.17694/bajece.419645

Cited By: 3

Abstract

Human factors have an
important effect on performance of software teams and resulting software
products. One of the seldom-studied aspects of human factors is the effect of
personality-based team formation on team cohesion and quality of the software
product. In this study, we investigate the above effect by conducting an exploratory
case study during a term-long undergraduate software engineering course
containing a project component with 50 undergraduate students. We grouped the
students based on the social-interaction dimension (introversion/ extraversion)
of the well-known Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) personality assessment
model. We then collected the relevant metrics to explore/analyze the two
parameters of interest in our study: team cohesion, and project grade as an
indicator of project output (i.e. resulting product quality). Our results show
that there is some (although weak) relationship between the team formation
scheme (based on either introversion or extraversion) with group performance and
project grade. The results also show that mixed grouping of personality types
has no significant effect on team cohesion but is advantageous in achieving
higher project grades especially for people with low GPAs. 

Keywords

human factors, team formation, MBTI, team cohesion, product quality, software projects, empirical study.

References

• T. DeMarco and T. Lister, Peopleware: productive projects and teams. Dorset House Publishing Co., Inc., 1987, p. 188. [2] N. Gorla and Y. W. Lam, "Who should work with whom? building effective software project teams," Commun. ACM, vol. 47, no. 6, pp. 79-82, 2004. [3] L. T. Hardiman, "Personality Types and Software Engineers," Computer, vol. 30, no. 10, pp. 10-10, 1997. [4] C. A. Wellington, T. Briggs, and C. D. Girard, "Examining team cohesion as an effect of software engineering methodology," SIGSOFT Softw. Eng. Notes, vol. 30, no. 4, pp. 1-5, 2005. [5] J. Karn and T. Cowling, "A follow up study of the effect of personality on the performance of software engineering teams," presented at the Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE international symposium on Empirical Software Engineering, 2006. [6] S. T. Acuña, M. Gómez, and N. Juristo, "How do personality, team processes and task characteristics relate to job satisfaction and software quality?," Information and Software Technology, vol. 51, no. 3, pp. 627-639, 2009. [7] O. Mazni, S.-L. Syed-Abdullah, and N. M. Hussin, "Analyzing personality types to predict team performance," in International Conference on Science and Social Research (CSSR), 2010, pp. 624-628. [8] F. Q. B. da Silva, S. S. J. O. Cruz, T. B. Gouveia, and L. F. Capretz, "Using Meta-ethnography to Synthesize Research: A Worked Example of the Relations between Personality and Software Team Processes," in ACM IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement, 2013, pp. 153-162. [9] D. Bell, T. Hall, J. E. Hannay, D. Pfahl, and S. T. Acuna, "Software engineering group work: personality, patterns and performance," in Proceedings of the Annual Conference on Computer Personnel Research, 2010, pp. 43-47, 1796921. [10] J. Congalton, "A mixed methods investigation of ethnic diversity and productivity in software development teams," PhD thesis, Information Systems, Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand, 2014. [11] M. Gómez and S. Acuña, "A replicated quasi-experimental study on the influence of personality and team climate in software development," (in English), Empirical Software Engineering, vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 343-377, 2014. [12] S. T. Acuña, M. N. Gómez, J. E. Hannay, N. Juristo, and D. Pfahl, "Are team personality and climate related to satisfaction and software quality? Aggregating results from a twice replicated experiment," Information and Software Technology, vol. 57, pp. 141-156, 2015. [13] Constance Lynn Counselling, "Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) " http://www.constancelynn.com/assessments/myers-briggs-type-indicator-mbti/, Last accessed: Nov. 2017. [14] NERIS Analytics Limited, "Free online personality test for Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)," http://www.16personalities.com/free-personality-test, Last accessed: Nov. 2017. [15] S. S. J. O. Cruz, F. Q. B. da Silva, C. V. F. Monteiro, C. F. Santos, and M. T. dos Santos, "Personality in software engineering: Preliminary findings from a systematic literature review," in Annual Conference on Evaluation & Assessment in Software Engineering, 2011, pp. 1-10. [16] D. P. McAdams, The Person: An Integrated Introduction to Personality Psychology. Harcourt, 2001. [17] S. McDonald and H. M. Edwards, "Who should test whom? Examining the use and abuse of personality tests in software engineering," Commun. ACM, vol. 50, no. 1, pp. 66-71, 2007. [18] J. B. Kahnweiler, The Genius of Opposites: How Introverts and Extroverts Achieve Extraordinary Results Together. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2015. [19] Forbes, "Can Introverts And Extroverts Ever Work Well Together? How Opposites Can Collaborate Brilliantly," http://www.forbes.com/sites/kathycaprino/2015/09/07/can-introverts-and-extroverts-ever-work-well-together-how-opposites-can-collaborate-brilliantly, 2015, Last accessed: Nov. 2017. [20] S. L. Kichuk and W. H. Wiesner, "The big five personality factors and team performance: implications for selecting successful product design teams," Journal of Engineering and Technology Management, vol. 14, no. 3–4, pp. 195-221, 1997. [21] M. André, M. G. Baldoquín, and S. T. Acuña, "Formal model for assigning human resources to teams in software projects," Information and Software Technology, vol. 53, no. 3, pp. 259-275, 2011. [22] F. da Silva et al., "Team building criteria in software projects: A mix-method replicated study," Information and Software Technology, vol. 55, no. 7, pp. 1316-1340, 2013. [23] M. Huxham and R. Land, "Assigning Students in Group Work Projects. Can We Do Better than Random?," Innovations in Education & Training International, vol. 37, no. 1, pp. 17-22, 2000. [24] M. E. Shaw, R. Robbin, and J. R. Belser, Group Dynamics: The Psychology of Small Group Behavior. McGraw-Hill, 1981. [25] C. R. Evans and K. L. Dion, "Group cohesion and performance a meta-analysis," Small group research, vol. 22, no. 2, pp. 175-186, 1991. [26] B. Mullen and C. Copper, "The relation between group cohesiveness and performance: An integration," Psychological Bulletin, vol. 115, no. 2, pp. 210-227, 1994. [27] V. R. Basili, "Software modeling and measurement: the Goal/Question/Metric paradigm," Technical Report, University of Maryland at College Park1992. [28] C. Verwijs, "Agile Teams: Don't use happiness metrics, measure Team Morale," http://blog.agilistic.nl/agile-teams-dont-use-happiness-metrics-measure-team-morale/, Last accessed: Nov. 2017. [29] L. v. Boxmeer, C. Verwijs, R. d. Bruin, J. Duel, and M. C. Euwema, "A direct measure of Morale in the Netherlands Armed Forces Morale Survey: theoretical puzzle, empirical testing and validation," in Presented at Internation Military Testing Association Symposium, 2007. [30] I. E. Allen and C. A. Seaman, "Likert Scales and Data Analyses," http://asq.org/quality-progress/2007/07/statistics/likert-scales-and-data-analyses.html, Last accessed: Nov. 2017. [31] Anonymous author(s), "How to Use the Likert Scale in Statistical Analysis," http://statisticscafe.blogspot.nl/2011/05/how-to-use-likert-scale-in-statistical.html, Last accessed: Nov. 2017. [32] J. Carver, L. Jaccheri, S. Morasca, and F. Shull, "Issues in using students in empirical studies in software engineering education," in Proceedings International Software Metrics Symposium, 2003, pp. 239-249. [33] M. Svahnberg, A. Aurum, and C. Wohlin, "Using students as subjects - an empirical evaluation," presented at the Proceedings of the ACM-IEEE international symposium on Empirical software engineering and measurement, 2008. [34] Eclipse foundation, "Open Unified Process (OpenUP) development process," http://epf.eclipse.org/wikis/openup/, Last accessed: Nov. 2017. [35] Visual Paradigm International, "Visual Paradigm tool," https://www.visual-paradigm.com, Last accessed: Nov. 2017. [36] C. Wohlin, P. Runeson, M. Höst, M. C. Ohlsson, B. Regnell, and A. Wesslén, Experimentation in Software Engineering: An Introduction. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000.