Communication and personality profiles of global software developers

Abstract

Context: Prior research has established that a small proportion of individuals dominate team communication during global software development. It is not known, however, how these members' contributions affect their teams' knowledge diffusion process, or whether their personality profiles are responsible for their dominant presence. Objective: We set out to address this gap through the study of repository artifacts. Method: Artifacts from ten teams were mined from the IBM Rational Jazz repository. We employed social network analysis (SNA) to group practitioners into two clusters, Top Members and Others, based on the numbers of messages they communicated and their engagement in task changes. SNA metrics (density, in-degree and closeness) were then used to study practitioners' importance in knowledge diffusion. Thereafter, we performed psycholinguistic analysis on practitioners' messages using linguistic dimensions that had been previously correlated with the Big Five personality profiles. Results: For our sample of 146 practitioners we found that Top Members occupied critical roles in knowledge diffusion, and demonstrated more openness to experience than the Others. Additionally, all personality profiles were represented during teamwork, although openness to experience, agreeableness and extroversion were particularly evident. However, no specific personality predicted members' involvement in knowledge diffusion. Conclusion: Task assignment that promotes highly connected team communication networks may mitigate tacit knowledge loss in global software teams. Additionally, while members expressing openness to experience are likely to be particularly driven to perform, this is not entirely responsible for a global team's success.

Exploratory Factor Analysis for Software Development Projects in Mexico

“…This variable is very important throughout the entire development work cycle but especially during the initial and final stages of a project. All personnel from both the client and outsourcing companies should keep in constant communication during all development phases [16,20]. It is possible that communication deficiencies may cause a negative impact on other important variables, e.g., the negative values obtained for 'lack of internal development skills'(Y 1 ) and 'development time planning'(Y 2 ).…”

“…Clearly, the previous work phases need to be properly managed and planned out in order to minimize any potential risks [21], i.e., it should also include accurate estimates regarding timeframe durations for each phase based on other key factors such as personnel size, their technical skills, available resources, among others. Of course, customers and developers should communicate effectively at all times to ensure deadlines are satisfied as well as all customers demands [16,20]. Otherwise, communication deficiencies may cause deliverables to slip.…”

A Strategy Based on Genetic Algorithms for Forming Optimal Collaborative Learning Groups: An Empirical Study

“…Now, from the pedagogical point of view, it is confirming that not considering criteria related to personality traits before the group formation has generally led to lower results. Taking into account personality traits in the group formation process enhances their collaborative performance when it comes to software development activities [78,[82][83][84][85][86][87][88][89][90]. In this aspect, the highlight of the study is that those groups whose formation has been pre-established by the teachers through the proposed strategy, in general, have had a better collaborative performance than groups with traditional formation, except in the case of heterogeneous training.…”

Representación en el Núcleo de la Esencia de Semat de las Competencias de un Equipo de Desarrollo de Software

“…Los actores externos son los profesionales que ocupan los roles identificados para el proyecto de investigación. El psicólogo es la persona con el conocimiento para identificar las competencias organizacionales y ejecutar las pruebas psicológicas (Licorish y MacDonell, 2015). En la Figura 3 se presenta un diagrama de actividades del proyecto: Fig.…”