Towards understanding the relationship between team climate and software quality—a quasi-experimental study

Abstract

This paper describes an empirical study that examined the work climate within software development teams. The question was whether the team climate in software developer teams has any relation to software product quality. We define team climate as the shared perceptions of the team's work procedures and practices. The team climate factors examined were West and Anderson's participative safety, support for innovation, team vision and task orientation. These four factors were measured before the project using the Team Selection Inventory (TSI) test to establish subject climate preferences, as well as during and after the project using the Team Climate Inventory (TCI) test, which establishes the subject's perceptions of the climate. In this quasi-experimental study, data were collected from a sample of 35 three-member developer teams in an academic setting. These teams were formed at random and their members were blind to the quasi-experimental conditions and hypotheses. All teams used an adaptation of extreme programming (XP) to the students' environment to develop the same software system. We found that high team vision preferences and high participative safety perceptions of the team were significantly related to better software. Additionally, the results show that there is a positive relationship between the categorization of better than preferred, as preferred and worse than preferred climate and software quality for two of the teamwork climate factors: participative safety and team vision. So it seems important to track team climate in an organization and team as one (of many) indicators of the quality of the software to be delivered.

Are team personality and climate related to satisfaction and software quality? Aggregating results from a twice replicated experiment

“…The second part focuses on the study of team climate [5][6][7] with respect to product quality and software development team member satisfaction in the quasi-experimental study. This research is reported in detail in Acuña et al [2]. In the following sections we describe the goals, hypotheses, variables, participants, subjects, measurement instruments, and quasi-experimental procedure of the three studies.…”

“…They conclude hence that empirical studies require replication to consolidate knowledge that is potentially useful for new research and is likely to influence software engineering practice. The research reported here presents a meta-analysis of replications that we have conducted of the baseline experiment [2,3].…”

“…Some research has taken this aspect into [2,3,26,35] that characterize and compare software team factors leading to higher effectiveness.…”

Soft Skills for Software Project Team Members

“…They are actually responsible for ensuring the quality of the application [21]. End users are there to provide direction of what needs to be done as part of the project [22] and they are the main reason why an SDP is conducted. The main purpose of conducting SDPs is to address the challenges the end users are facing [1].…”

Factors Contributing to Research Team Effectiveness: Testing a Model of Team Effectiveness in an Academic Setting

“…Although no direct effect was found between team climate and the other output factors examined in this study, the findings showed the presence of an indirect effect of team climate on all three output factors through team commitment. Most studies (Acuna, Gomez, & Jouristo, 2008;Blansett, 2003;Fox & Mohapatra, 2007) that have examined the influence of team climate on performance did not examine the mediating effect of a third variable. Hence, the influence of team climate on team performance found in those studies may be due to process factors such as team commitment.…”