Exposing Software Engineering Students to Stressful Projects: Does Diversity Matter?

Software development teams have to face stress caused by deadlines, staff turnover, or individual differences in commitment, expertise, and time zones. While students are typically taught the theory of software project management, their exposure to such stress factors is usually limited. However, preparing students for the stress they will have to endure once they work in project teams is important for their own sake, as well as for the sake of team performance in the face of stress. Team performance has been linked to the diversity of software development teams, but little is known about how diversity influences the stress experienced in teams. In order to shed light on this aspect, we provided students with the opportunity to self- experience the basics of project management in self-organizing teams, and studied the impact of six diversity dimensions on team performance, coping with stressors, and positive perceived learning effects. Three controlled experiments at two universities with a total of 65 participants suggest that the social background impacts the perceived stressors the most, while age and work experience have the highest impact on perceived learnings. Most diversity dimensions have a medium correlation with the quality of work, yet no significant relation to the team performance. This lays the foundation to improve students’ training for SE teamwork based on their diversity-related needs and to create diversity-sensitive awareness among educators, employers and researchers.软件开发团队（software development teams）常常需要应对由交付期限、人员流动，抑或是成员在工作投入、专业技能与时区方面存在个体差异所引发的压力。尽管学生通常会学习软件项目管理（software project management）的理论知识，但他们接触此类压力源的机会往往十分有限。然而，让学生提前适应未来在项目团队中将要承受的压力，无论是对学生自身发展，还是保障压力情境下的团队绩效而言，都至关重要。团队绩效（team performance）与软件开发团队的多样性存在关联，但目前学界对团队多样性如何影响成员所感知到的团队压力仍知之甚少。为了厘清这一研究空白，我们为学生提供了在自组织团队（self-organizing teams）中亲身体验项目管理基础工作的机会，并研究了六大多样性维度（diversity dimensions）对团队绩效、压力源应对（coping with stressors）以及积极感知学习效果（positive perceived learning effects）的影响。在两所高校开展的三项受控实验（controlled experiments）共招募65名参与者，结果显示社会背景对感知压力源（perceived stressors）的影响最大，而年龄与工作经验对感知学习效果的影响最为显著。多数多样性维度与工作质量（quality of work）存在中等程度的相关，但与团队绩效并无显著关联。本研究为基于多样性相关需求优化学生的软件工程（SE）团队协作培训，以及在教育者、雇主与研究者群体中培育多样性敏感意识奠定了基础。