Developing diversity awareness of software engineers: A Diversity Framework and its application in an academic and life-long learning context

Abstract

Soft skills, societal awareness and the ability to work in interdisciplinary teams are crucial traits for future software engineers. Still, these social skills seem to be underrepresented in the education of software engineers. To support a practical integration of such aspects also into education, a so-called “Diversity Framework” has been developed that helps to externalize implicit factors such as different work behaviors in project teams. This paper firstly presents this theoretic, empirically validated framework for externalizing and managing diverse work styles in information and communication technology (ICT) environments. Moreover, the paper examines how two student teams on an undergraduate level perceived the Diversity Framework in a qualitative focus group research setting. Furthermore, the results exemplify how the different teams approached the topic differently. Finally, this work provides suggestion for future research and an integration of the framework in academic software engineering education and life-long learning.