Influence of individual human factorson team performance in Agile softwaredevelopment

Abstract: Background. With the growing trend in using Agile development method in thesoftware industry, the importance of "people" in the software development processhas risen up. As much as the technical aspects contribute to a better software processand products, it is ultimately people that make the software. Hence, studying thehuman factors in the perspective of software development can be considered significant especially in studying the effect of these factors on performance of the teams intoday’s Agile based development scenario. Objectives. The objective of this thesis is to identify the individual based humanfactors that influence the software team performance.Methods. For this project, we use the methods systematic literature review(snowballingstudy) and survey to identify and understand the influence of the human aspects onteam performance and possibly arrive at an understanding of these factors tendingtowards high-performing Agile teams. Results. The results of the thesis indicate that there are 19 factors that impactthe team performance. The results show that personality, professional knowledge,formal education, leadership style, work experience etc., are all impacting factorsof the performance of a team. Though, personality was the most mentioned factorfollowed by communication and professional knowledge. These results when weretried to verify through a survey showed similarities as well as some aberrations tothe results obtained from SLR. According to survey, professional knowledge has thehighest importance while personality scored lower than expected in the practitioner’sperspective. Although, many factors had similar degree of importance as for the results from both methods. Conclusions. It is essential to study the impact of the individual based factors onteam performance and several factors can be indicated that show their effect on theperformance of a team. Essentially, the study of the factors can be used to buildprocesses and teams focused to better their performance which can ultimately leadto better softwares. Individuals contribute to the team and studying the factors thatrely on their characteristics helps understand the team as a whole in a better waywhich can in-turn aid in improvement.