Soft Skills and Software Development: A Reflection from the Software Industry

Psychological theories assert that not everybody is fit for every task, as people have different personality traits and abilities. Often, personality traits are expressed in people’s soft skills. That is, the way people perceive, plan and execute any assigned task is influenced by their set of soft skills. Most of the studies carried out on the human factor in IS concentrate primarily on personality types. Soft skills have been given comparatively little attention by researchers. We review the literature relating to soft skills and the software engineering and information systems domain before describing a study based on 650 job advertisements posted on well-known recruitment sites from a range of geographical locations including, North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. The study makes use of nine defined soft skills to assess the level of demand for each of these skills related to individual job roles within the software industry. This work reports some of the vital statistics from industry about the requirements of soft skills in various roles of software development phases. The work also highlights the variation in the types of skills required for each of the roles. We found that currently although the software industry is paying attention to soft skills up to some extent while hiring but there is a need to further acknowledge the role of these skills in software development. The objective of this paper is to analyze the software industry’s soft skills requirements for various software development positions, such as system analyst, designer, programmer, and tester. We pose two research questions, namely, (1) What soft skills are appropriate to different software development lifecycle roles, and (2) Up to what extend does the software industry consider soft skills when hiring an employee. The study suggests that there is a further need of acknowledgment of the significance of soft skills from employers in software industry

Would You Like to Motivate Software Testers? Ask Them How

Considering the importance of software testing to the development of high quality and reliable software systems, this paper aims to investigate how can work-related factors influence the motivation of software testers. Method. We applied a questionnaire that was developed using a previous theory of motivation and satisfaction of software engineers to conduct a survey-based study to explore and understand how professional software testers perceive and value work-related factors that could influence their motivation at work. Results. With a sample of 80 software testers we observed that software testers are strongly motivated by variety of work, creative tasks, recognition for their work, and activities that allow them to acquire new knowledge, but in general the social impact of this activity has low influence on their motivation. Conclusion. This study discusses the difference of opinions among software testers, regarding work-related factors that could impact their motivation, which can be relevant for managers and leaders in software engineering practice

Intercultural Communication and Collaboration in Software Development

Master's thesis in Business administration (BE501)Many Global Software firms outsource parts of their operations to other countries due to cheaper labour costs and to find employees with high knowledge within a specific area. Collaboration and communication between different nationalities aredifficult not only due to the distance geographically,but also distances in cultural aspects. The purpose of this study is to investigatedifferent factors that impact intercultural communication and collaboration in software development firms. Previous research in this field shows various factors impacting intercultural communication and collaboration in software development companies. To investigate these factors exploratory mixed-method design has been used. Initially, qualitative methodology was used to collect data from semi-structured interviews. Eight interviews were conducted with various work roles within a single Norwegian firm. The interviewees explain how various factors impact their communication and collaboration withcolleagues inIndia and Ukraine. These results have been analysed. Secondly, a quantitative survey was conducted based on Isern ́s (2014) eight identity factors of intercultural communication. Other factors based on the findings from the interviewshave also been discussed

Soft Skills Requirements in Software Development Jobs: A Cross-Cultural Empirical Study

Purpose: Most of the studies carried out on human factor in software development concentrate primarily on personality traits. However, soft skills which largely help in determining personality traits have been given comparatively little attention by researchers. The purpose of this paper is to find out whether employers’ soft skills requirements, as advertised in job postings, within different roles of software development, are similar across different cultures. Design/methodology/approach: The authors review the literature relating to soft skills before describing a study based on 500 job advertisements posted on well-known recruitment sites from a range of geographical locations, including North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. The study makes use of nine defined soft skills to assess the level of demand for each of these skills related to individual job roles within the software industry. Findings: It was found that in the cases of designer, programmer and tester, substantial similarity exists for the requirements of soft skills, whereas only in the case of system analyst is dissimilarity present across different cultures. It was concluded that cultural difference does not have a major impact on the choice of soft skills requirements in hiring new employee in the case of the software development profession. Originality/value: Specific studies concerning soft skills and software development have been sporadic and often incidental, which highlights the originality of this work. Moreover, no concrete work has been reported in the area of soft skills and their demand as a part of job requirement sets in diverse cultures, which increases the value of this paper

A machine-based personality oriented team recommender for software development organizations

Hiring the right person for the right job is always a challenging task in software development landscapes. To bridge this gap, software_rms start using psychometric instruments for investigating the personality types of software practitioners. In our previous research, we have developed an MBTI-like instrument to reveal the personality types ofsoftware practitioners. This study aims to develop a personality-based team recommender mechanism to improve the e_ectiveness of software teams. The mechanism is based on predicting the possible patterns of teams using a machine-based classi_er. The classi_er is trained with em-pirical data (e.g. personality types, job roles), which was collected from52 software practitioners working on _ve different software teams. 12software practitioners were selected for the testing process who were recommended by the classi_er to work for these teams. The preliminary results suggest that a personality-based team recommender system mayprovide an effective approach as compared with ad-hoc methods of teamformation in software development organizations. Ultimately, the overallperformance of the proposed classi_er was 83.3%. These _ndings seemacceptable especially for tasks of suggestion where individuals might beable to _t in more than one team

Predicting most productive requirements elicitation teams using MBTI personality traits model

The social and collaborative nature of requirements elicitation process bases its core dependency on aptitude, attitudes, and personality characteristics of its participants. The participant's personality characteristics are directly related with their personality traits, which can be categorized using different model has been used successfully for the assessments of personality of software engineers since last few decades. In this article, the personality traits for requirements elicitation teams have been predicted using MBTI personality assessments model, on the basis of their industry demands job descriptions/tasks and major soft skills. The article presents a complete personality prediction process using a systematic approach based on major soft skills mapping with job descriptions, personality attributes and personality. The obtained results show that extroversion and feelings personality traits are the most suitable assigned the task of requirements elicitation. The obtained results are very much aligned with the already published scholar's work for software engineer's personality assessments and development team composition

The Impact of Personality on Requirements Engineering Activities: A Mixed-Methods Study

Context: Requirements engineering (RE) is an important part of Software Engineering (SE), consisting of various human-centric activities that require the frequent collaboration of a variety of roles. Prior research has shown that personality is one such human aspect that has a huge impact on the success of a software project. However, a limited number of empirical studies exist focusing on the impact of personality on RE activities. Objective: The objective of this study is to explore and identify the impact of personality on RE activities, provide a better understanding of these impacts, and provide guidance on how to better handle these impacts in RE. Method: We used a mixed-methods approach, including a personality test-based survey (50 participants) and an in-depth interview study (15 participants) with software practitioners from around the world involved in RE activities. Results: Through personality test analysis, we found a majority of the practitioners have a high score on agreeableness and conscientiousness traits and an average score on extraversion and neuroticism traits. Through analysis of the interviews, we found a range of impacts related to the personality traits of software practitioners, their team members, and external stakeholders. These impacts can be positive or negative, depending on the RE activities, the overall software development process, and the people involved in these activities. Moreover, we found a set of strategies that can be applied to mitigate the negative impact of personality on RE activities. Conclusion: Our identified impacts of personality on RE activities and mitigation strategies serve to provide guidance to software practitioners on handling such possible personality impacts on RE activities and for researchers to investigate these impacts in greater depth in future.Comment: Accepted to Empirical Software Engineering Journa