Insights on the relationship between decision-making style and personality in software engineering

Context: Software development involves many activities, and decision making is an essential one. Various factors can impact a decision-making process, and by understanding such factors, one can improve the process. Since people are the ones making decisions, some human-related aspects are amongst those influencing factors. One such aspect is the decision maker’s personality. Objective: This research investigates the relationship between decision-making style and personality within the context of software project development. Method: We conducted a survey in a population of Brazilian software engineers to gather data on their personality and decision-making style. Results: Data from 63 participants was gathered and resulted in the identification of seven statistically significant correlations between decision-making style and personality (personality factor and personality facets). Furthermore, we built a regression model in which decision-making style (DMS) was the response variable and personality factors the independent variables. The backward elimination procedure selected only agreeableness to explain 4.2% of DMS variation. The model accuracy was evaluated and deemed good enough. Regarding the moderation effect of demographic variables (age, educational level, experience, and role) on the relationship between DMS and Agreeableness, the analysis showed that only software engineers’ role has such effect. Conclusion: This paper contributes toward understanding the relationship between DMS and personality. Results show that the personality variable agreeableness can explain the variation in decision-making style. Furthermore, someone’s role in a software development project can impact the strength of the relationship between DMS and agreeableness

REVISIÓN BIBLIOGRÁFICA SOBRE LOS PRINCIPIOS DEL SISTEMA DE TRABAJO PARA EL ANÁLISIS Y DISEÑO DE PROCESOS ORGANIZACIONALES

Explaining the design of organizational processes is a paramount issue because the processes specify the knowledge of how the organization works. For this reason, the need to create capacities for the timely detection, planning and execution of analysis projects and design of processes oriented to innovation is imposed, which is complex to systematize, due to the dynamics of change to which organizations are subjected to. In the scientific literature, 10 principles have been synthesized that impact on the components of the work system for the innovation of organizational processes. The research aims to expose the results of a literature review conducted to assess the compliance with such principles in methodological and technological solutions that are oriented to process innovation. From the study of 3633 bibliographical references it has been verified that no solution is in conformity with the totality of the principles, evidencing deficiencies that impact on the effectiveness, efficiency and sustainability of the design of the organizational processes.Explicitar el diseño de los procesos de la organización posee gran importancia debido a que los procesos especifican el conocimiento de cómo la organización funciona. Por tal motivo, se impone la necesidad de crear capacidades para la detección oportuna, planificación y ejecución de proyectos de análisis y diseño de procesos orientados a la innovación, lo que es complejo de sistematizar, a causa de la dinámica de cambio a la que se ven sometidas las organizaciones. En la literatura científica se han sintetizado 10 principios que impactan en los componentes del sistema de trabajo para la innovación de procesos organizacionales. La investigación tiene como objetivo exponer los resultados de la revisión bibliográfica realizada sobre el grado de cumplimiento de los principios en las soluciones metodológicas y tecnológicas que se orientan a la innovación de procesos. A partir del estudio de 3633 referencias bibliográficas se comprueba que ninguna solución está en conformidad con la totalidad de los principios, evidenciando carencias que impactan en la eficacia, eficiencia y sostenibilidad del diseño de los procesos organizacionales

Un lenguaje de modelado para representar visualmente las decisiones de diseño arquitectónico y su rationale: Rationale

The architectural rationale is the set of reasons behind the decisions made when designing the architecture of a software system. Normally, this rationale remains in the minds of designers and others involved in the design. Therefore, the reasoning behind the decisions that underpin the architecture model may be lost if not properly documented, causing maintainability problems in the software. In practice, the rationale is not documented or is documented in the middle of the architectural descriptions, which makes it difficult to understand and support subsequent decisions, within the development and maintenance of software, which is more critical in the agile approach to development. To address this problem, this paper proposes a documentation approach that combines rationale modeling with a focus on decisions made in projects that use agile methods, to specify a language that provides the basis for the construction of a tool that we have called DRML (Decisions and Rationale Modeling Language). The language is evaluated to document the rationale in the framework of the Unique Indigenous Information System (SUIIN, for its acronym in Spanish) project, in the context of a public entity that within its processes has a work team made up of systems engineers focused on software development. This evaluation has established that the approach provides sufficient expressiveness to document the decisions and their rationale, however, it has limitations to scale the modeling for a large number of decisions and their relationships.El rationale arquitectónico es el conjunto de razones detrás de las decisiones tomadas al diseñar la arquitectura de un sistema de software. Normalmente, dicho rationale se queda en las mentes de los diseñadores y demás involucrados en el diseño. Por lo tanto, el razonamiento detrás de las decisiones que sustentan el modelo de arquitectura puede perderse si no se documenta adecuadamente, causando problemas de mantenibilidad en el software. En la práctica, el rationale no se documenta o se documenta en medio de las descripciones arquitecturales, lo cual dificulta su comprensión y apoyo a las decisiones posteriores, dentro del desarrollo y mantenimiento de software, lo cual resulta más crítico en el enfoque ágil de desarrollo. Para abordar este problema, en este trabajo se propone un enfoque de documentación que combina el modelado del rationale, con foco en las decisiones que se toman en proyectos que utilizan métodos ágiles, con el fin de especificar un lenguaje que fundamente las bases para la construcción de una herramienta que hemos denominado Decisions and rationale modeling language (DRML). El lenguaje es evaluado para documentar el rationale en el marco del proyecto “Sistema Único de Información Indígena (SUIIN)”, en el contexto de una entidad pública que dentro sus procesos tienen un equipo de trabajo conformado por ingenieros de sistemas, enfocados en el desarrollo de software. Dicha evaluación ha permitido establecer que el enfoque brinda la suficiente expresividad para documentar las decisiones y su rationale, sin embargo, presenta limitaciones para escalar el modelado para un número grande de decisiones y sus relaciones