Diversity and Teamwork in Student Software Teams

Abstract

Diversity is becoming an increasingly relevant topic in software engineering. A higher diversity rate in professional software teams has been shown to positively influence communication, innovation, and performance. Understanding whether similar effects exist in software development teams at an educational level would be important to identify potential challenges and opportunities that might affect students at later professional stages. Therefore, in this paper we investigate the impact of diversity on key teamwork skills such as communication, collaboration, and productivity in student software development teams. In particular, we conducted several surveys on project work progress throughout an introductory software engineering course with students and their tutors regarding these teamwork metrics. We investigate how the self-assessments and the project outcomes relate to seven aspects of diversity, and find correlations between teamwork satisfaction and team diversity. We see deteriorations in certain teamwork metrics over the project timeline—independently of the team diversity. Our findings suggest that the impact of diversity on student teams may be more complex than on professional teams: diversity minorities in teams may feel frustrated more easily. Consequently, it is important to ensure that software development courses maintain motivation and decrease possible frustrations regarding teamwork.