research-article

When teams go crazy: an environment to experience group dynamics in software project management courses

Authors:

Marco Kuhrmann,

Jürgen MünchAuthors Info & Claims

ICSE '16: Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Software Engineering Companion

Pages 412 - 421

https://doi.org/10.1145/2889160.2889194

Published: 14 May 2016 Publication History

Abstract

Software development consists to a large extend of human-based processes with continuously increasing demands regarding interdisciplinary team work. Understanding the dynamics of software teams can be seen as highly important to successful project execution. Hence, for future project managers, knowledge about non-technical processes in teams is significant. In this paper, we present a course unit that provides an environment in which students can learn and experience the impact of group dynamics on project performance and quality. The course unit uses the Tuckman model as theoretical framework, and borrows from controlled experiments to organize and implement its practical parts in which students then experience the effects of, e.g., time pressure, resource bottlenecks, staff turnover, loss of key personnel, and other stress factors. We provide a detailed design of the course unit to allow for implementation in further software project management courses. Furthermore, we provide experiences obtained from two instances of this unit conducted in Munich and Karlskrona with 36 graduate students. We observed students building awareness of stress factors and developing counter measures to reduce impact of those factors. Moreover, students experienced what problems occur when teams work under stress and how to form a performing team despite exceptional situations.

References

[1]

A. Avritzer, S. Beecham, R. Britto, J. Kroll, D. Sadoc Menasche, J. Noll, and M. Paasivaara. Extending survivability models for global software development with media synchronicity theory. In International Conference on Global Software Engineering, pages 23--32, 2015.

Digital Library

[2]

S. Ball, T. Emerson, J. Lewis, and J. T. Swarthout. Classroom experiments. Available from http://serc.carleton.edu/sp/library/experiments/index.html, May 2012.

[3]

V. Basili, R. Selby, and D. Hutchens. Experimentation in software engineering. Transactions on Software Engineering, 12(7):733--743, 1986.

Digital Library

[4]

G. Bavota, A. De Lucia, F. Fasano, R. Oliveto, and C. Zottoli. Teaching software enginerring and software project management: An integrated and practical approach. In International Conference on Software Engineering, pages 1155--1164, 2012.

Digital Library

[5]

J. H. Bradley and F. J. Hebert. The effect of personality type on team performance. Journal of Management Development, 16(5):337--353, 1997.

[6]

F. P. Brooks. The Mythical Man-Month. Addison-Wesley Longman, 1995.

Digital Library

[7]

V. Casey and I. Richardson. Project management within virtual software teams. In International Conference on Global Software Engineering, pages 33--42, 2006.

Digital Library

[8]

J. O. Coplien and N. B. Harrison. Organizational Patterns of Agile Software Development. Prentice Hall, 2004.

Digital Library

[9]

D. Dahiya. Teaching software engineering: A practical approach. ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes, 35(2):1--5, 2010.

Digital Library

[10]

J. Dillon. A Review of the Research on Practical Work in School Science. Technical report, King's College, 2008.

[11]

F. Fagerholm, A. S. Guinea, H. Mäenpää, and J. Münch. Building blocks for continuous experimentation. In International Workshop on Rapid Continuous Software Engineering, pages 26--35, 2014.

Digital Library

[12]

F. Fagerholm, M. Ikonen, P. Kettunen, J. Münch, V. Roto, and P. Abrahamsson. Performance alignment work: How software developers experience the continuous adaptation of team performance in lean and agile environments. Information and Software Technology, 64:132--147, August 2015.

Digital Library

[13]

D. Fucci, B. Turhan, and M. Oivo. On the effects of programming and testing skills on external quality and productivity in a test-driven development context. In International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering, pages 25:1--25:6. ACM, 2015.

Digital Library

[14]

N. Gorla and Y. W. Lam. Who should work with whom?: Building effective software project teams. Communications of the ACM, 47(6):79--82, June 2004.

Digital Library

[15]

J. Jiang and G. Klein. Software development risks to project effectiveness. Journal of Systems and Software, 52(1):3--10, 2000.

Digital Library

[16]

E. Kamsties and C. Lott. An empirical evaluation of three defect-detection techniques. In Europ. Software Engineering Conference, pages 362--383, 1995.

Digital Library

[17]

E. Keenan, A. Steele, and X. Jia. Simulating global software development in a course environment. In International Conference on Global Software Engineering, pages 201--205, 2010.

Digital Library

[18]

Kent Beck et al. Manifesto for agile software development. Available from http://www.agilemanifesto.org, 2001.

[19]

M. Kuhrmann. A practical approach to align research with master's level courses. In International Conference on Computational Science and Engineering, pages 202--208, 2012.

Digital Library

[20]

M. Kuhrmann, D. M. Fernández, and J. Münch. Teaching software process modeling. In International Conference on Software Engineering, pages 1138--1147, 2013.

Digital Library

[21]

J. Münch, F. Fagerholm, P. Johnson, J. Pirttilahti, J. Torkkel, and J. Järvinen. Creating minimum viable products in industry-academia collaborations. In Lean Enterprise Software and Systems Conference, pages 137--151, 2013.

[22]

Ocampo, A. and Münch, J. Rationale modeling for software process evolution. Journal on Software Process: Improvement and Practice, 14(2):85--105, 2009.

Digital Library

[23]

W. Pádua. Measuring complexity, effectiveness and efficiency in software course projects. In International Conference on Software Engineering, pages 545--554, 2010.

Digital Library

[24]

J. Parker. Using laboratory experiments to teach introductory economics. Working paper, Reed College, http://academic.reed.edu/economics/parker/ExpBook95.pdf, accessed 23 October 2014.

[25]

I. Richardson, A. E. Milewski, and N. Mullick. Distributed development: an education perspective on the global studio project. In International Conference on Software Engineering, pages 679--684, 2006.

Digital Library

[26]

P. Runeson. Using students as experiment subjects-an analysis on graduate and freshmen student data. In International Conference on Empirical Assessment in Software Engineering, pages 95--102, 2003.

[27]

G. P. Sudhakar, A. Farooq, and S. Patnaik. Soft factors affecting the performance of software development teams. Team Performance Management: An International Journal, 17(3/4):187--205, 2011.

[28]

B. W. Tuckman. Developmental sequence in small groups. Psychological Bulletin, 63(6):384--399, 1965.

[29]

L. Wallace, M. Keil, and A. Rai. How software project risk affects project performance: An investigation of the dimensions of risk and an exploratory model*. Decision Sciences, 35(2):289--321, 2004.

[30]

Wohlin, C., Runeson, P., Höst, M., Ohlsson, M. C. Regnell, B., and Wesslén, A. Experimentation in Software Engineering. Springer, 2012.

Digital Library

[31]

H.-L. Yang and J.-H. Tang. Team structure and team performance in is development: A social network perspective. Inf. Manage., 41 (3):335--349, Jan. 2004.

Digital Library

Cited By

Fauzan RSiahaan DSolekhah MSaputra VBagaskara AKarimi M(2023)A Systematic Literature Review of Student Assessment Framework in Software Engineering CoursesJournal of Information Systems Engineering and Business Intelligence10.20473/jisebi.9.2.264-2759:2(264-275)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2023
https://doi.org/10.20473/jisebi.9.2.264-275
Graßl IFraser GTrieflinger SKuhrmann M(2023)Exposing Software Engineering Students to Stressful Projects: Does Diversity Matter?2023 IEEE/ACM 45th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training (ICSE-SEET)10.1109/ICSE-SEET58685.2023.00026(210-222)Online publication date: May-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSE-SEET58685.2023.00026
Dong DButler RHerbert J(2022)Evaluation of the effectiveness of developing real-world software projects as a motivational device for bridging theory and practiceJournal of Further and Higher Education10.1080/0309877X.2022.207072746:9(1275-1289)Online publication date: 3-May-2022
https://doi.org/10.1080/0309877X.2022.2070727
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

When teams go crazy: an environment to experience group dynamics in software project management courses
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Management of computing and information systems
      1. Project and people management
      2. System management
        Quality assurance
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management

Recommendations

Highlighting Management Issues Affecting Outsourcing in Pakistan's Software Industry
ICEIT 2019: Proceedings of the 2019 8th International Conference on Educational and Information Technology

Software Projects Outsourcing is used extensively by different organizations as a sourcing strategy today and it becomes a crucial issue in achieving specific objective. This paper studies the impact of management issues on the effectiveness of ...
Enriching traditional software engineering curricula with software project management knowledge
ICSE '16: Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Software Engineering Companion

Training existing and future software project managers presents a challenge to the academic community. Software project management is usually taught as part of software engineering bachelor or master programs which are generally based on SWEBOK. However,...
Practicum in software project management: an endeavor to effective and pragmatic software project management education
ESEC-FSE '07: Proceedings of the the 6th joint meeting of the European software engineering conference and the ACM SIGSOFT symposium on The foundations of software engineering

One of the key factors influencing project success or failure is project management. Unfortunately, effective management of software projects is not in practice; what is actually being practiced varies significantly from what is advised in the available ...

Comments

Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

ICSE '16: Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Software Engineering Companion

May 2016

946 pages

ISBN:9781450342056

DOI:10.1145/2889160

General Chair:
Laura Dillon
Michigan State University
,
Program Chairs:
Willem Visser
Stellenbosch University, South Africa
,
Laurie Williams
North Carolina State University

Copyright © 2016 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

ACM: Association for Computing Machinery
SIGSOFT: ACM Special Interest Group on Software Engineering
IEEE-CS\TCSE: TC on Software Engineering
IEEE-CS\DATC: IEEE Computer Society

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 14 May 2016

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Conference

ICSE '16

Sponsor:

ACM
SIGSOFT
IEEE-CS\TCSE
IEEE-CS\DATC

ICSE '16: 38th International Conference on Software Engineering

May 14 - 22, 2016

Texas, Austin

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 276 of 1,856 submissions, 15%

Upcoming Conference

ICSE 2025

2025 IEEE/ACM 46th International Conference on Software Engineering

April 26 - May 3, 2025

Ottawa , ON , Canada

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

11
Total Citations
View Citations
455
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)52
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)3

Reflects downloads up to 24 Nov 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Fauzan RSiahaan DSolekhah MSaputra VBagaskara AKarimi M(2023)A Systematic Literature Review of Student Assessment Framework in Software Engineering CoursesJournal of Information Systems Engineering and Business Intelligence10.20473/jisebi.9.2.264-2759:2(264-275)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2023
https://doi.org/10.20473/jisebi.9.2.264-275
Graßl IFraser GTrieflinger SKuhrmann M(2023)Exposing Software Engineering Students to Stressful Projects: Does Diversity Matter?2023 IEEE/ACM 45th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training (ICSE-SEET)10.1109/ICSE-SEET58685.2023.00026(210-222)Online publication date: May-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSE-SEET58685.2023.00026
Dong DButler RHerbert J(2022)Evaluation of the effectiveness of developing real-world software projects as a motivational device for bridging theory and practiceJournal of Further and Higher Education10.1080/0309877X.2022.207072746:9(1275-1289)Online publication date: 3-May-2022
https://doi.org/10.1080/0309877X.2022.2070727
Farooq MOmer UTahseen R(2021)Software Project Management Education: A Systematic ReviewVFAST Transactions on Software Engineering10.21015/vtse.v9i3.7029:3(102-119)Online publication date: 30-Sep-2021
https://doi.org/10.21015/vtse.v9i3.702
Mas AMesquida AColomo-Palacio R(2021)Enhancing the Student Perception on Software Project Management in Computer ScienceIEEE Transactions on Education10.1109/TE.2020.299842964:1(1-11)Online publication date: Feb-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/TE.2020.2998429
Pfutzenreuter Tde Lima EFrega J(2021)Building High Performance TeamsProduction Research10.1007/978-3-030-76307-7_19(251-264)Online publication date: 12-May-2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76307-7_19
Christov SHoffman MHawthorne EPérez-Quiñones MHeckman SZhang J(2019)Experiential Learning of Software Project Management and Software Development via Course CollaborationProceedings of the 50th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education10.1145/3287324.3287457(160-166)Online publication date: 22-Feb-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3287324.3287457
Kapitsaki GLoizou SPolycarpou IRead JAndreou PArmoni M(2018)Bringing together undergraduate and postgraduate students in software engineering team project: experiences and lessonsProceedings of the 23rd Annual ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education10.1145/3197091.3197103(320-325)Online publication date: 2-Jul-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3197091.3197103
Fagerholm FKuhrmann MMünch J(2017)Guidelines for using empirical studies in software engineering educationPeerJ Computer Science10.7717/peerj-cs.1313(e131)Online publication date: 4-Sep-2017
https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj-cs.131
Saini JCnomal V(2017)SaiCho: A parameters based model for team building for academic software projects2017 Second International Conference on Electrical, Computer and Communication Technologies (ICECCT)10.1109/ICECCT.2017.8117859(1-9)Online publication date: Feb-2017
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICECCT.2017.8117859
Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents