The Effects of Roles and Personality Characteristics on Software Development Team Effectiveness

Abstract

The objective of this research is to show the utility of

roles and personality characteristics to the evaluation and

formation of software development teams. The goals of this

research include demonstrating empirically that Belbin's

team roles can be used to form and evaluate software teams,

providing a partial validation of the analyses by using the

Belbin roles to analyze teams from the software industry,

and comparing the personality data collected for this

research to data from two previous studies and to the

general population.<p>

In the highly competitive software industry, improving the

software development process can be critical to a company's

success. More specifically, improving a team's productivity

can save employers significant time and money. This

investigation addresses the productivity of software

development teams in a series of studies. First, controlled

studies empirically show that Belbin's roles can be used

in team formation to improve team performance. Second,

additional studies, both qualitative and quantitative,

demonstrate that Belbin's roles can be used as criteria in

team evaluation and formation. Finally, teams from the

software development industry are evaluated, providing a

partial validation of the usefulness of Belbin's roles to

software teams.<p>

The cumulative effect of the results of the studies in this

investigation demonstrate that Belbin's roles can be used

effectively in team formation and evaluation. Specifically,

Belbin's roles for leadership and innovation are shown in

empirical studies to be important in the formation of

software teams, and all of the Belbin roles are used in the

evaluation of teams in academia as well as in industry.<p>

The results of this investigation should be used in team

formation and evaluation, in an academic setting as well as

in the software development industry. For team evaluation,

deficiencies uncovered in the Belbin roles should be

remedied, and positive aspects should be encouraged. In

team formation, teams should contain the complement of

Belbin roles and should specifically contain the leadership

and innovation roles focused on as part of this

investigation. It is clear from this investigation that

Belbin's roles can be used effectively to improve software

development teams.<p>