Meetings and Mood-Related or Not? Insights from Student Software Projects

[Background:] Teamwork, coordination, and communication are a prerequisite for the timely completion of a software project. Meetings as a facilitator for coordination and communication are an established medium for information exchange. Analyses of meetings in software projects have shown that certain interactions in these meetings, such as proactive statements followed by supportive ones, influence the mood and motivation of a team, which in turn affects its productivity. So far, however, research has focused only on certain interactions at a detailed level, requiring a complex and fine-grained analysis of a meeting itself. [Aim:] In this paper, we investigate meetings from a more abstract perspective, focusing on the polarity of the statements, i.e., whether they appear to be positive, negative, or neutral. [Method:] We analyze the relationship between the polarity of statements in meetings and different social aspects, including conflicts as well as the mood before and after a meeting. [Results:] Our results emerge from 21 student software project meetings and show some interesting insights: (1) Positive mood before a meeting is both related to the amount of positive statements in the beginning, as well as throughout the whole meeting, (2) negative mood before the meeting only influences the amount of negative statements in the first quarter of the meeting, but not the whole meeting, and (3) the amount of positive and negative statements during the meeting has no influence on the mood afterwards. [Conclusions:] We conclude that the behaviour in meetings might rather influence short-term emotional states (feelings) than long-term emotional states (mood), which are more important for the project

Least-cost planning : ein energiepolitisches Instrument auf dem Prüfstand

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Differenzierte Ermittlung des Gender Care Gap auf Basis der repräsentativen Zeitverwendungsdaten 2012/13

Die vorliegende Expertise enthält eine differenzierte Analyse des Gender Care Gap auf der Basis der repräsentativen Zeitverwendungserhebung 2012/13 des Statistischen Bundesamtes. Mit dem Gender Care Gap wurde ein Indikator entwickelt, der die unterschiedlichen Zeitbindungen von Frauen und Männern für eine gesellschaftlich notwendige Arbeitsform − die unbezahlte Care-Arbeit – in Deutschland ausweist und andere Kennziffern wie den Gender Pay Gap oder den Gender Pension Gap sinnvoll ergänzt, um geschlechtsspezifische Ungleichheitsdimensionen detailliert auszuweisen. Der Gender Care Gap ist hier definiert als die prozentuale Differenz der durchschnittlichen täglichen Zeitverwendung für Care-Arbeit aller Frauen in Bezug zu der durchschnittlichen täglichen Zeitverwendung für Care-Arbeit der entsprechenden Gruppe der Männer. Dabei verwendet diese Expertise einen erweiterten Care-Begriff, der sowohl die Care-Arbeit für sich selbst als auch für andere Personen sowie die Hausarbeit beinhaltet. Aus diesem Grund werden die Care-Tätigkeiten in direkte Care-Arbeit mit und an anderen Personen sowie in unterstützende Care-Arbeit für Personen und alle Hausarbeiten unterschieden

Private households in the area of tension between precarious time prosperity and time poverty

Die individuelle Zeitautonomie und die damit einhergehenden Verwirklichungschancen sind abhängig vom Geschlecht, der Haushaltskonstellation, der Bildung, dem Beruf und dem Einkommen. Dabei verstärkt die Corona-Pandemie die soziale Ungleichheit weiter, womit Auswirkungen im gesamten Lebensverlauf einhergehen können. (DIPF/Orig.)Individual time autonomy and the associated opportunities for realisation depend on gender, household constellation, education, occupation, and income. In this context, the Corona pandemic further increases social inequality with effects throughout the life span. (DIPF/Orig.

How agile coaches create an agile mindset in development teams: Insights from an interview study

Since the publication of the agile manifesto in 2001, many companies implement an agile—or at least more agile—software development process. However, only including agile methods or practices in the overall process does not guarantee being agile. The mindset of the people involved in the process, including the development team, the customers, and the management, is of particular importance. As such an agile mindset cannot be enforced, the process of creating a suitable mindset needs to be handled with care. In an interview study with nine agile coaches, we analyzed which aspects they perceive being of particular importance during an agile transformation. One of these aspects is the agile mindset. We figure out how they support the creation of such a mindset. We identify 12 categories related to the process of creating an agile mindset. These categories include the collaboration between the coach and the management as well as the necessity to internalize the agile values. The main factor for succeeding with the creation of an agile mindset, however, can be hardly influenced: The success strongly depends on the personal prerequisites and attitudes of the individuals involved in the process, mainly the development team. We synthesize the results of our study into a timeline describing the process of how an agile coach can support the development team creating an agile mindset as part of the transformation towards an agile development process