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

The objective of this research is to show the utility ofroles and personality characteristics to the evaluation andformation of software development teams. The goals of thisresearch include demonstrating empirically that Belbin'steam roles can be used to form and evaluate software teams,providing a partial validation of the analyses by using theBelbin roles to analyze teams from the software industry,and comparing the personality data collected for thisresearch to data from two previous studies and to thegeneral population. In the highly competitive software industry, improving thesoftware development process can be critical to a company'ssuccess. More specifically, improving a team's productivitycan save employers significant time and money. Thisinvestigation addresses the productivity of softwaredevelopment teams in a series of studies. First, controlledstudies empirically show that Belbin's roles can be usedin team formation to improve team performance. Second,additional studies, both qualitative and quantitative,demonstrate that Belbin's roles can be used as criteria inteam evaluation and formation. Finally, teams from thesoftware development industry are evaluated, providing apartial validation of the usefulness of Belbin's roles tosoftware teams. The cumulative effect of the results of the studies in thisinvestigation demonstrate that Belbin's roles can be usedeffectively in team formation and evaluation. Specifically,Belbin's roles for leadership and innovation are shown inempirical studies to be important in the formation ofsoftware teams, and all of the Belbin roles are used in theevaluation of teams in academia as well as in industry. The results of this investigation should be used in teamformation and evaluation, in an academic setting as well asin the software development industry. For team evaluation,deficiencies uncovered in the Belbin roles should beremedied, and positive aspects should be encouraged. Inteam formation, teams should contain the complement ofBelbin roles and should specifically contain the leadershipand innovation roles focused on as part of thisinvestigation. It is clear from this investigation thatBelbin's roles can be used effectively to improve softwaredevelopment teams.