How to Staff Software Engineering Team Roles Using the Concept of Personality? – An Exploratory Study

Abstract

Nowadays, software is developed in teams. But how should software development teams be staffed in order to build a high performing team? This study investigates how the different roles in a software development team derived from the software lifecycle – project leader, requirements engineer, architect/designer, and developer/tester/maintainer – should be staffed with respect to HEXACO personality traits in order to form a high performing team. We conduct a qualitative analysis by leading 12 semistructured interviews with experts from the software engineering sector and with working experience of at least 2 years. We follow a Grounded Theory approach to derive personality traits and link them to software engineering roles. Our study shows that different personality profiles are beneficial for different roles and that corresponding staffing decisions can be beneficial for team performance. Our results support the composition of software engineering teams with the aim to successfully build high performing teams. Further studies can build on our findings, e.g. by measuring certain software quality aspects and connecting them to the personality profile of the developing team.