Assessing Personality Traits in a Large Scale Software Development Company: Exploratory Industrial Case Study

Abstract

Software development methodologies become increasingly more people and team-oriented. However, many software projects fail due to conflicts of team members. Formation of an effective software development team may be particularly challenging given the differences inherent across an individual’s personality. This paper explores personality traits of agile software development teams by using a context-specific interactive assessment. Concerning the assessment, we have conducted a questionnaire with 110 participants from a large-scale software development company. We have visualized personality traits with team radar charts showing the personality traits of 18 project teams and analyzed the results by validation interviews. Our preliminary results indicate that higher introversion is observed most commonly in isolated teams that has less contact with customers. Moreover, high levels of agreeableness and conscientiousness personality traits are observed in most of the agile software development teams.