The impact of personality and self-efficacy on domain modeling productivity in graphical and textual notations

Context: Software development is a complex and human-intensive activity, where human factors can have a significant impact on productivity and quality of results. To address the complexity of software, domain modeling has gained much importance, mainly due to software methodologies such as Model-Driven Engineering and Domain-Driven Design. In particular, domain modeling is an essential task that allows developers to understand and effectively represent the problem domain. However, domain modeling productivity can be affected by several human factors, including developers’ personality and self-efficacy. Objective: The study aims to explore the influence of human factors, specifically developers’ personality and self-efficacy, on domain modeling productivity in graphical and textual notations. Method: An empirical controlled study was conducted with 134 third-year computer science students from the University of Alicante, guided by the definition of a theoretical model based on previous studies. The participants were tasked with creating domain models in both graphical and textual notations. The order in which the notations were used was randomized, and the participants were given different system specifications to model. After modeling, 98 participants completed questionnaires assessing their personality, self-efficacy, and notation satisfaction. The design and evaluation of the experiment employed the Goal, Question, and Metrics framework. Data analysis was performed using a stepwise selection method to select the most appropriate regression model. Results: The study indicates that personality and self-efficacy have a significant impact on the performance of junior domain model developers. Specifically, it was discovered that while neuroticism had a negative impact on efficiency in both notations, developers’ ability belief and use of graphical notation had a positive influence on effectiveness and efficiency in creating domain models. Conclusions: These findings highlight the importance of considering human factors and notation choice in software development. Developers’ personality and self-efficacy emerge as critical considerations for enhancing both productivity and quality in domain modeling.This work was supported by Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under contract PID2019-111196RB-I00 (Access@IoT), and was also partially funded by the Eramus+Programme of the European Union through the EduTech project (609785-EPP-1-2019-1-ES- EPPKA2-CBHE-JP) and the SKOPS project (Ref 2020-1-DE01-KA226HE-005772)

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

Human factors that influence the success of Agile Projects

Dissertation presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Information Management, specialization in Marketing IntelligenceProject management, when based on agile methodologies, has brought improvements in the success rate in software development projects in recent years, contributing to the improvement of service quality and boosting motivation and productivity in their teams. Thus, it is important to understand what people face when managing projects, using agile methodologies. This study suggests a revised model for assessing the impact of human variables that affect the success of agile methodology in a project management context based on the DeLone & McLean IS Success Model. Our model combines three human factors including collaboration quality as independent variable and agile mindset and agile coach as moderators between the relationship of user satisfaction and individual performance. The motivation of this research is to gain a better understanding of the factors that can influence the achievement of successful agile project management, taking into consideration the factors related with individual performance. The results of a SEM-PLS analysis of 201 professional respondents indicate that "user satisfaction" and "individual performance" are the two most important elements in the success of agile software development projects. Managers and teams will be able to set priorities and improve project outcomes by recognizing which aspects are crucial for success. We discuss this topic, the limitations of the research, and possible paths for future studies

Happiness and the productivity of software engineers

Software companies and startups often follow the idea of flourishing happiness among developers. Perks, playground rooms, free breakfast, remote office options, sports facilities near the companies, company retreats, you name it. The rationale is that happy developers should be more productive and also retained. But is it the case that happy software engineers are more productive? Moreover, are perks the way to go to make developers happy? Are developers happy at all? What are the consequences of unhappiness among software engineers? These questions are important to ask both from the perspective of productivity and from the perspective of sustainable software development and well-being in the workplace. Managers, team leaders, as well as team members should be interested in these concerns. This chapter provides an overview of our studies on the happiness of software developers. You will learn why it is important to make software developers happy, how happy they really are, what makes them unhappy, and what is expected regarding happiness and productivity while developing software.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figures. To appear in Rethinking Productivity in Software Engineering, edited by Caitlin Sadowski and Thomas Zimmermann. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1707.0043

A framework for understanding the factors influencing pair programming success

Pair programming is one of the more controversial aspects of several Agile system development methods, in particular eXtreme Programming (XP). Various studies have assessed factors that either drive the success or suggest advantages (and disadvantages) of pair programming. In this exploratory study the literature on pair programming is examined and factors distilled. These factors are then compared and contrasted with those discovered in our recent Delphi study of pair programming. Gallis et al. (2003) have proposed an initial framework aimed at providing a comprehensive identification of the major factors impacting team programming situations including pair programming. However, this study demonstrates that the framework should be extended to include an additional category of factors that relate to organizational matters. These factors will be further refined, and used to develop and empirically evaluate a conceptual model of pair programming (success)

Software cost estimation

The paper gives an overview of the state of the art of software cost estimation (SCE). The main questions to be answered in the paper are: (1) What are the reasons for overruns of budgets and planned durations? (2) What are the prerequisites for estimating? (3) How can software development effort be estimated? (4) What can software project management expect from SCE models, how accurate are estimations which are made using these kind of models, and what are the pros and cons of cost estimation models

A framework of justification criteria for advanced manufacturing technology implementation in small and medium enterprises

Today in order to stay in businesses and prosper, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are seeking higher electiveness and competitiveness across the entire cycle of marketing, product design, manufacture, test and sales. SMEs play an increasingly important role in all aspects of competitiveness: both products and production techniques, but also management methods, the organization of the firm and human resources training. One of the ways by which SMEs can achieve a competitive advantage in manufacturing is through the implementation of Advanced Manufacturing Technology (AMT). An increasing number of them have chosen and are choosing various levels of AMT as the solution. Realizing the importance of SMEs, an attempt has been made in this paper to review the application of AMT in SMEs. Also, a framework has been offered for the implementation of AMT in SMEs. Finally, a summary of findings and conclusions are presented