Diversity and productivity in agile teams: individual perceptions versus data
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5753/isys.2023.2972Keywords:
Diversity in Scrum teams, soft skills, communication in software engineeringAbstract
This paper investigates the influence of diversity on agile teams results, comparing individual perceptions of the developers with team's productivity and quality measurements. The study was carried out in an industry context, involving five teams with different diversity profiles. The work extends a previous research, including an investigation into the representativeness of diversity categories found in the teams and an analysis of soft skills based on the gender of the developer. Although other statistical analyzes can be performed, the results showed a positive influence of diversity on productivity and quality measurements of the evaluated teams. Regarding gender diversity, as expected, low representativeness was observed in the teams, but relatively promising results were found in terms of women's perception of the soft skills they possess. Finally, a certain discrepancy was observed when crossing metric results with the individual perceptions of the interviewed developers, indicating some communication failures within the evaluated teams.
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