Non-Technical Individual Skills are Weakly Connected to the Maturity of Agile Practices

Context: Existing knowledge in agile software development suggests that individual competency (e.g. skills) is a critical success factor for agile projects. While assuming that technical skills are important for every kind of software development project, many researchers suggest that non-technical individual skills are especially important in agile software development. Objective: In this paper, we investigate whether non-technical individual skills can predict the use of agile practices. Method: Through creating a set of multiple linear regression models using a total of 113 participants from agile teams in six software development organizations from The Netherlands and Brazil, we analyzed the predictive power of non-technical individual skills in relation to agile practices. Results: The results show that there is surprisingly low power in using non-technical individual skills to predict (i.e. explain variance in) the mature use of agile practices in software development. Conclusions: Therefore, we conclude that looking at non-technical individual skills is not the optimal level of analysis when trying to understand, and explain, the mature use of agile practices in the software development context. We argue that it is more important to focus on the non-technical skills as a team-level capacity instead of assuring that all individuals possess such skills when understanding the use of the agile practices.Comment: 18 pages, 1 figur

Towards a Theory of Software Development Expertise

Software development includes diverse tasks such as implementing new features, analyzing requirements, and fixing bugs. Being an expert in those tasks requires a certain set of skills, knowledge, and experience. Several studies investigated individual aspects of software development expertise, but what is missing is a comprehensive theory. We present a first conceptual theory of software development expertise that is grounded in data from a mixed-methods survey with 335 software developers and in literature on expertise and expert performance. Our theory currently focuses on programming, but already provides valuable insights for researchers, developers, and employers. The theory describes important properties of software development expertise and which factors foster or hinder its formation, including how developers' performance may decline over time. Moreover, our quantitative results show that developers' expertise self-assessments are context-dependent and that experience is not necessarily related to expertise.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures, 26th ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE 2018), ACM, 201

Happy software developers solve problems better: psychological measurements in empirical software engineering

For more than 30 years, it has been claimed that a way to improve software developers' productivity and software quality is to focus on people and to provide incentives to make developers satisfied and happy. This claim has rarely been verified in software engineering research, which faces an additional challenge in comparison to more traditional engineering fields: software development is an intellectual activity and is dominated by often-neglected human aspects. Among the skills required for software development, developers must possess high analytical problem-solving skills and creativity for the software construction process. According to psychology research, affects-emotions and moods-deeply influence the cognitive processing abilities and performance of workers, including creativity and analytical problem solving. Nonetheless, little research has investigated the correlation between the affective states, creativity, and analytical problem-solving performance of programmers. This article echoes the call to employ psychological measurements in software engineering research. We report a study with 42 participants to investigate the relationship between the affective states, creativity, and analytical problem-solving skills of software developers. The results offer support for the claim that happy developers are indeed better problem solvers in terms of their analytical abilities. The following contributions are made by this study: (1) providing a better understanding of the impact of affective states on the creativity and analytical problem-solving capacities of developers, (2) introducing and validating psychological measurements, theories, and concepts of affective states, creativity, and analytical-problem-solving skills in empirical software engineering, and (3) raising the need for studying the human factors of software engineering by employing a multidisciplinary viewpoint.Comment: 33 pages, 11 figures, published at Peer

Coach and Athlete Perceptions of an Athlete Monitoring and Strength and Conditioning Program

Purpose: The purpose of this investigation was to assess athlete perceptions of an athlete monitoring program throughout an academic year and coach perceptions throughout a competitive season. The secondary purpose was to develop a questionnaire designed to assess coach and athlete perceptions of the monitoring program. Methods: Athletes and coaches participating in the athlete monitoring program at East Tennessee State University’s (ETSU) Sport Performance Enhancement Consortium (SPEC) were invited to participate. Reliability for the coach and athlete questionnaires and principle components analysis (PCA) of the athlete questionnaire was completed after initial development of the questionnaire (11 questions for athletes and 20 for coaches) in the spring of 2013. To analyze changes throughout the academic year, 4 additional questionnaires were administered at the beginning and end of the fall 2013 and spring 2014 semesters. Results: Both athlete and coach questionnaires were considered reliable (athletes = 0.842, coaches = 0.919). PCA revealed a 3 component model (KMO = 0.798, Bartlett’s test of Sphericity = p \u3c 0.001) with eigenvalues over one explaining 68.88% of total variance. Statistical differences between the pre and all other time points were noted for athlete’s perceptions of the SPEC programs influence on overall performance, skill, strength, speed, power, and understanding of the SPEC monitoring protocols. Coachs’ perceptions were statistically different from pre-to postseason only for skill. Conclusion: The questionnaire was shown reliable and can be considered for future use. The first component of the PCA revealed that perceptions of overall performance are influenced by perceptions of strength, skill, and power and agreement that testing data reflects performance, while the second showed that aerobic and anaerobic endurance as well as speed are all highly correlated and, finally, the third revealed that athletes’ understanding of the SPEC program monitoring increased with return of data. Overall, perceptions of the SPEC programs ability to influence the components assessed by the questionnaire were positive ranging from no different to much better for coaches and athletes. In conclusion, the SPEC athlete monitoring program seems to be a beneficial model for enhancing athletes’ and coaches’ perceptions of certain aspects of performance

An Assessment Instrument of Technological Literacies in Makerspaces and FabLabs

Background As the maker movement is increasingly adopted into K‐12 schools, students are developing new competences in exploration and fabrication technologies. This study assesses learning with these technologies in K‐12 makerspaces and FabLabs. Purpose Our study describes the iterative process of developing an assessment instrument for this new technological literacy, the Exploration and Fabrication Technologies Instrument, and presents findings from implementations at five schools in three countries. Our index is generalizable and psychometrically sound, and permits comparison between student confidence and performance. Design/Method Our evaluation of distinct technology skills separates general computing, information and communication technology (ICT), and exploration and fabrication technologies (EFTs) into nonoverlapping areas of technological expertise required to perform their respective sets of tasks. The instrument also tracks student confidence in EFT skills and assesses how that confidence relates to actual task performance. Results Exploration and fabrication technologies constitute a new and distinct set of technology literacies arising from fabrication settings. The EFT instrument compares students\u27 self‐reported confidence with their performance on complex design tasks and demonstrates that, for students, exposure to general computing and ICT tools differs from exposure to EFT tools. Conclusion The EFT instrument captures a new and distinct set of technology literacies that arise within fabrication settings and are independent of both general computing and digital content production skills