Observing Team Collaboration Personality Traits in Undergraduate Software Development Projects

Abstract

Team collaboration is an important aspect of software development. When translated to an undergraduate software engineering class, determining if the team is exhibiting positive collaboration toward successful milestone completion means knowing what actions to reward and when to intervene. Personality traits reflect a person’s tendency toward collaborative behavior. However, it remains a challenge to determine if collaborative traits are effective predictors of team project success. In addition, it is unclear if the traits should be measured at the individual or team level. In this paper we examine team member collaborative personality traits and observe their appearance and relationship to grades at each of three product milestones during an undergraduate software engineering course. We use IBM Watson™ Personality Insights service to process online team conversations. The observed patterns indicate which traits are found in well-performing teams and show how trait manifestation can change during the course of the project.