What Makes Team[s] Work? A Study of Team Characteristics in Software Engineering Projects

Abstract

Teaming is a core component in practically all professional software engineering careers, and as such, is a key skill taught in many undergraduate Computer Science programs. However, not all teams manage to work together effectively, and in education, this can deprive some students of successful teaming experiences. In this work, we seek to gain insights into the characteristics of successful and unsuccessful undergraduate student teams in a software engineering course. We conduct semi-structured interviews with 18 students who have recently completed a team-based software engineering course to understand how they worked together, what challenges they faced, and how they tried to overcome these challenges. Our results show that common problems include communicating, setting and holding to deadlines, and effectively identifying tasks and their relative difficulty. Additionally, we find that self-reflection on what is working and not working or external motivators such as grades help some, but not all, teams overcome these challenges. Finally, we conclude with recommendations for educators on successful behaviours to steer teams towards, and recommendations for researchers on future work to better understand challenges that teams face.