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Why do we need personality diversity in software engineering?

Published: 27 March 2010 Publication History

Abstract

Diversity of skills is good for society, it is also good in problem solving because different people see a problem from several pers-pectives, so diversity should be good for software engineering too. This study tackles a difficult to study aspect of software engineer-ing, that is, how to best associate personnel with the various tasks in a software project. The approach uses psychological types to determine who is best suited to particular development roles. The article has four main objectives: (1) to arouse awareness of human factors among software engineers; (2) to investigate how psycho-logical factors can contribute to their effectiveness at work; (3) to catalyze effort among software engineers leading towards a deeper understanding and broader applications of human factors in the light of the activities involving the engineering of software; and (4) to emphasize the important of skill diversity in the software engi-neering field. This article provides conceptual knowledge, reports findings, and presents both real and hypothesized beliefs from the software engineering community. Likewise, it is hoped that the article will motivate software engineers and psychologists to con-duct more research in the area of software psychology, so as to understand more profoundly the possibilities for increased effec-tiveness and fulfilment among software engineers

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Published In

cover image ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes
ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes  Volume 35, Issue 2
March 2010
113 pages
ISSN:0163-5948
DOI:10.1145/1734103
Issue’s Table of Contents

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 27 March 2010
Published in SIGSOFT Volume 35, Issue 2

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Author Tags

  1. MBTI
  2. diversity in software engineering
  3. human factors in software engineering
  4. personality types
  5. software psychology
  6. software skills

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