Understanding Goal-Directed Emotions in Agile Software Development Teams

Agile software development is people oriented and emphasizes on teamwork. The emotional experiences of the team members may creep up and significantly influence their behaviors. Our study examines the role of emotion in agile software development using a multi-site case study of two agile project teams. We develop a framework that explains how the project and individual goals trigger emotions and how the emotions influence behaviors and the project outcome. Our research highlights that agile project goals are interconnected with the individual goal and the misalignment between them bring about negative emotion when team members appraise the goal achievement situations

Human Factors in Agile Software Development

Through our four years experiments on students' Scrum based agile software development (ASD) process, we have gained deep understanding into the human factors of agile methodology. We designed an agile project management tool - the HASE collaboration development platform to support more than 400 students self-organized into 80 teams to practice ASD. In this thesis, Based on our experiments, simulations and analysis, we contributed a series of solutions and insights in this researches, including 1) a Goal Net based method to enhance goal and requirement management for ASD process, 2) a novel Simple Multi-Agent Real-Time (SMART) approach to enhance intelligent task allocation for ASD process, 3) a Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCMs) based method to enhance emotion and morale management for ASD process, 4) the first large scale in-depth empirical insights on human factors in ASD process which have not yet been well studied by existing research, and 5) the first to identify ASD process as a human-computation system that exploit human efforts to perform tasks that computers are not good at solving. On the other hand, computers can assist human decision making in the ASD process.Comment: Book Draf

Understanding the relationship between emotional intelligence and team effectiveness in global, high-technology engineering teams

This research focused on engineers in the high technology industry as a distinct population that remains understudied in research on workplace emotional intelligence (EI). A mixed-method field study was used to examine the relationship between emotional intelligence and team effectiveness in engineering teams in a global high-tech organization. The study population was 27 self-directed, global software development engineering teams whose work was structured using Agile / Scrum methodology. Team member EI was measured through use of the short form Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire. Group emotional intelligence was measured through use of the Team EI Survey, which assesses team norms that support group-level emotional intelligence. Team effectiveness was measured via surveys completed by both team members and their managers. Findings revealed the study population of engineers had significantly higher mean levels of individual trait EI and their teams had significantly higher group-level EI scores than the overall populations in the survey databases for both instruments. Individual trait EI and group-level EI were found to be significantly positively correlated with one another at the overall mean level and among many of their dimensions. Team member ratings of team effectiveness were shown to have a significant positive correlation with group-level EI, while manager ratings of team effectiveness showed an inverse, negative (although not significant) relationship. Qualitative responses from both managers and team members stated a strong valuing of emotionally-intelligent behaviors and norms as enablers of successful team performance. Consistent with the data, comments also suggested a strong connection between the practices of the Agile / Scrum methodology and the development and reinforcement of individual trait EI and group-level EI norms. Implications for practice include establishing a common definition of team effectiveness across managers and team members. Findings also support the development and use of group-level emotional intelligence norms for engineering teams. Further research is recommended to explore the relationship between use of the Agile/Scrum methodology and individual and group emotional intelligence. This study contributes to the literature on emotional intelligence and team effectiveness, particularly for self-directed engineering teams using the Agile / Scrum methodology

How Do You Feel, Developer? An Explanatory Theory of the Impact of Affects on Programming Performance

Affects---emotions and moods---have an impact on cognitive activities and the working performance of individuals. Development tasks are undertaken through cognitive processes, yet software engineering research lacks theory on affects and their impact on software development activities. In this paper, we report on an interpretive study aimed at broadening our understanding of the psychology of programming in terms of the experience of affects while programming, and the impact of affects on programming performance. We conducted a qualitative interpretive study based on: face-to-face open-ended interviews, in-field observations, and e-mail exchanges. This enabled us to construct a novel explanatory theory of the impact of affects on development performance. The theory is explicated using an established taxonomy framework. The proposed theory builds upon the concepts of events, affects, attractors, focus, goals, and performance. Theoretical and practical implications are given.Comment: 24 pages, 2 figures. Postprin

Uncovering Situations of Cargo Cult Behavior in Agile Software Development Method Use

Misinterpretations and faulty use of Software Development Method (SDM) practices and principles are identified pitfalls in Software Development (SD). Previous research indicates cases with method adoption and use failures; one reason could be the SDM Cargo Cult (CC) behavior, where SD organizations claim to be agile but not doing agile. Previous research has suggested the SDM CC framework as an analytical tool. The aim of this paper is to refine the SDM CC framework and empirically test this version of the framework. We use data from an ethnographical study on three SD teams’ Daily Scrum Meetings (DSM). The empirical material was collected through observations, interviews, and the organization’s business documents. We uncovered twelve CC situations in the SD teams’ use of the DSM practice, structured into seven categories of SDM deviations: bringing irrelevant information, canceling meetings, disturbing the team, receiving unclear information, bringing new requirements, problem-solving, and task distribution

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