Team effectiveness in software development: Human and cooperative aspects in team effectiveness models and priorities for future studies (original) (raw)
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IEEE Software, 2016
In 1993, Walz, Elam and Curtis [1] stated that research on "how teams actually go about" making requirement determinations and design decisions can provide valuable insights for improving the quality and productivity. Since then, more and more tasks are performed by software, and software development is increasingly undertaken by teams. This article reviews studies on factors that influence team performance for co-located teams, and make propositions on five factors based on solid scientific studies. These propositions are relevant for practitioners in software teams, project managers, managers and researchers interested in software development. We ask how these propositions compare with current advice on software development as condensed in the Agile manifesto. Team performance has been studied in many disciplines, from management science [2] and organizational psychology [3] to information systems [S12]. From these disciplines we find thorough review articles, providing insight on key findings such as the importance of establishing a common "mental model" within a team. Many of the studies conducted in other disciplines have been performed on software development teams [4], because such teams are examples of knowledge work in an innovative setting. What can the software engineering discipline learn from these studies? We investigate what main factors influence the performance of software development teams.
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Teamwork is crucial in software development, particularly in agile development teams which are cross-functional and where team members work intensively together to develop a cohesive software solution. Effective teamwork is not easy; prior studies indicate challenges with communication, learning, prioritization, and leadership. Nevertheless, there is much advice available for teams, from agile methods, practitioner literature, and general studies on teamwork to a growing body of empirical studies on teamwork in the specific context of agile software development. This article presents the agile teamwork effectiveness model (ATEM) for colocated agile development teams. The model is based on evidence from focus groups, case studies, and multi-vocal literature and is a revision of a general team effectiveness model. Our model of agile teamwork effectiveness is composed of shared leadership, team orientation, redundancy, adaptability, and peer feedback. Coordinating mechanisms are needed...
2011
This study investigated the reasons for the ineffective performance of software development teams in Sri Lankan organizations. It proposes a research model to examine team performance from an individual and task-related perspective. Data for the study was collected through the aid of a questionnaire based survey consisting of 177 participants in 9 Sri Lankan companies serving the Asia/Pacific and international market. The data was supplemented by 8 in-depth interviews. Analysis of the data was conducted using SPSS. The technique used was to first test correlations between each of the independent variables identified in the study with the dependent variable, perceived team effectiveness. Subsequently, a step-wise multiple regression analysis was used to test the impact that each category of variables has on perceived team effectiveness. Then a principal component analysis was conducted for the most significant predictors of perceived team effectiveness as revealed in the regression a...
Towards high performance software teamwork
Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering - EASE '13, 2013
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Journal of Telecommunication, Electronic and Computer Engineering, 2016
A number of projects have failed in software industry due to exceeding budget and schedule. The main reason for most project failure is poor performance of their development team, in which the team performance is affected by a number of factors. The main objective of this study is to identify the factors that have significant effect on the performance of the software development team. A set of questionnaire has been distributed to a sample of software developers in telecommunication industries in Iraq and Kurdistan Region Government (KRG) using stratified sampling technique. The analysis of the data was carried out using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to examine the relationship between the identified factors and the performance on software development team. The results prove that coordination of expertise; communication and mutual support positively affect the performance of software development team.
The Effect of Team Work Quality on Team Performance in Global Software Engineering
Advances in Systems Analysis, Software Engineering, and High Performance Computing, 2019
Global software engineering (SE) has increased in popularity and is now commonplace in most software organizations. This is due to the fact that business and technology have evolved, which has had an impact on the borderless world. As a consequence, software teams are often geographically dispersed, though they all have the same goal-to produce high-quality software. In order to achieve that goal, quality teamwork is important to build a high-performance team. This study aims to get an in-depth understanding of what quality teamwork is, as well as investigate how communication and socialization can have an impact on team performance. This study took a qualitative approach to the data collection process by carrying out interviews with three experts of agile distributed teams. The results of this study demonstrate that active communication stimulates socialization, and thus increases and maintains morale and motivation among team members. Future studies could focus on the impact of other quality teamwork, such as the influence of trust on team performance among global SE teams.
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Small, self-directed teams are central in agile development. This article investigates the effect of teamwork quality on team performance, learning and work satisfaction in agile software teams, and whether this effect differs from that of traditional software teams. A survey was administered to 477 respondents from 71 agile software teams in 26 companies and analyzed using structural equation modeling. A positive effect of teamwork quality on team performance was found when team members and team leaders rated team performance. In contrast, a negligible effect was found when product owners rated team performance. The effect of teamwork quality on team members´learning and work satisfaction was strongly positive, but was only rated by the team members. Despite claims of the importance of teamwork in agile teams, this study did not find teamwork quality to be higher than in a similar survey on traditional teams. The effect of teamwork quality on team performance was only marginally greater for the agile teams than for the traditional teams.
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Teamwork Quality and Team Performance: Exploring Differences Between Small and Large Agile Projects
Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming, 2018
Agile principles were originally developed for small projects but are now widely used in larger projects with hundreds of developers. Teamwork quality is essential in any development work, but how does teamwork quality differ in small and large agile projects? We report from an explorative survey with 64 agile teams and 320 team members and team leaders, from 31 teams in small projects and 33 teams in large projects. For small projects, teamwork quality was considered by both team members and team leaders to primarily affect product quality. For large projects, the effect of teamwork quality on product quality was positive when it was rated by team members but was negative when rated by team leaders. At a finer granularity, the six dimensions of teamwork quality that we investigated affected team performance differently in small and large projects. These findings question to what extent findings from previous studies on teamwork in agile development in small projects apply to large projects.