research-article

A study of the organizational dynamics of software teams

Authors:

Michael Hilton,

Andrew BegelAuthors Info & Claims

ICSE-SEIP '18: Proceedings of the 40th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Practice

Pages 191 - 200

https://doi.org/10.1145/3183519.3183527

Published: 27 May 2018 Publication History

Abstract

Large-scale software is developed by teams of engineers that work together. The teams' compositions change all the time, with engineers continuously leaving and joining. Learning about these organizational dynamics is vital to understanding how engineers acquire technical skills and business relationships throughout their career. In addition, since employee turnover can be costly to team morale and productivity, it is important for management to learn how to proactively guide the process. In this paper, we report on a study of a professional software development organization in which engineers switch teams frequently. We learned what causes engineers to consider leaving their teams, why they leave, how they learn about new teams, and how they decide which team to join. We also quantify the perceived costs and benefits of recent moves made by the engineers. In addition to reporting the answers to our research questions, we interpret our results to offer recommendations to engineers and their managers on how to ensure that both make better, happier team moves.

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Cited By

Zhou XHuang HZhang HHuang XShao DZhong CHarman MMiller H(2022)A cross-company ethnographic study on software teams for DevOps and microservicesProceedings of the 44th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Practice10.1145/3510457.3513054(1-10)Online publication date: 21-May-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3510457.3513054
Masood ZHoda RBlincoe K(2022)What Drives and Sustains Self-Assignment in Agile TeamsIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2021.310173248:9(3626-3639)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2021.3101732
Zhou XHuang HZhang HHuang XShao DZhong C(2022)A Cross-Company Ethnographic Study on Software Teams for DevOps and Microservices: Organization, Benefits, and Issues2022 IEEE/ACM 44th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Practice (ICSE-SEIP)10.1109/ICSE-SEIP55303.2022.9794010(1-10)Online publication date: May-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSE-SEIP55303.2022.9794010
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Index Terms

A study of the organizational dynamics of software teams
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Collaboration in software development
      1. Programming teams

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cover image ACM Conferences

ICSE-SEIP '18: Proceedings of the 40th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Practice

May 2018

336 pages

ISBN:9781450356596

DOI:10.1145/3183519

Conference Chairs:
Frances Paulisch
Siemens Healthineers, Germany
,
Jan Bosch
Chalmers University of Technology

Copyright © 2018 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]

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IEEE-CS: Computer Society

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 27 May 2018

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ICSE '18

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SIGSOFT
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ICSE '18: 40th International Conference on Software Engineering

May 27 - June 3, 2018

Gothenburg, Sweden

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ICSE 2025

2025 IEEE/ACM 46th International Conference on Software Engineering

April 26 - May 3, 2025

Ottawa , ON , Canada

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Cited By

Zhou XHuang HZhang HHuang XShao DZhong CHarman MMiller H(2022)A cross-company ethnographic study on software teams for DevOps and microservicesProceedings of the 44th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Practice10.1145/3510457.3513054(1-10)Online publication date: 21-May-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3510457.3513054
Masood ZHoda RBlincoe K(2022)What Drives and Sustains Self-Assignment in Agile TeamsIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2021.310173248:9(3626-3639)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2021.3101732
Zhou XHuang HZhang HHuang XShao DZhong C(2022)A Cross-Company Ethnographic Study on Software Teams for DevOps and Microservices: Organization, Benefits, and Issues2022 IEEE/ACM 44th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Practice (ICSE-SEIP)10.1109/ICSE-SEIP55303.2022.9794010(1-10)Online publication date: May-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSE-SEIP55303.2022.9794010
Foundjem AEghan EAdams B(2021)Onboarding vs. Diversity, Productivity, and QualityProceedings of the 43rd International Conference on Software Engineering10.1109/ICSE43902.2021.00097(1033-1045)Online publication date: 22-May-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/ICSE43902.2021.00097
Leite LPinto GKon FMeirelles P(2021)The organization of software teams in the quest for continuous deliveryInformation and Software Technology10.1016/j.infsof.2021.106672139:COnline publication date: 1-Nov-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.infsof.2021.106672
Zhang HHuang HShao DHuang XDevanbu PCohen MZimmermann T(2020)Fireteam: a small-team development practice in industryProceedings of the 28th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3368089.3417068(1365-1375)Online publication date: 8-Nov-2020
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Zhao DXing ZChen CXia XLi GAtlee JBultan TWhittle J(2019)ActionNetProceedings of the 41st International Conference on Software Engineering10.1109/ICSE.2019.00049(350-361)Online publication date: 25-May-2019
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Avelino GConstantinou EValente MSerebrenik A(2019)On the abandonment and survival of open source projects: An empirical investigation2019 ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM)10.1109/ESEM.2019.8870181(1-12)Online publication date: Sep-2019
https://doi.org/10.1109/ESEM.2019.8870181

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