Agile Teams Require Socially Skilled Developers
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Agile feels pretty dominant in software engineering methodologies these days to such an extent most reading this post will be working in such an environment.
This article is a discussion about a paper discussing personality traits and their impact on Agile, and what we can learn from knowing something about personality when working with software developers.
“Do I even have a personality? I guess we are going to see if our personality traits are likely to help or hinder our project.”
Social communication issues can mean project failure
Personal traits are certainly a big deal in software development, and this comes out in the meta-analysis in the paper. These usually boil down to communication between personalities.
“If you were to ask my colleagues about me, they’d say I have strong opinions but struggle to convince others about the validity of my points.
I remember this is one of the 12 key points why projects fail: communication. When you combine communication and different personalities we need to develop strategies to make sure everyone works together.
This stuff is a big deal in my experience. The best teams I’ve worked in have been happy places where people work well together and have *fun*. Underlying that fun and startup feel is good communication.”
Performance in Agile Environments
The following are associated with successful software development skills:
good communication skills
detail-oriented
hard working
creative
able to cope in a changing environment
These are skills that represent people from across the spectrum of personality types. However, if developers are not good at communication they simply can’t work together.
“To be productive in agile teams I’ve seen that communication skills are prized. You need to keep those tickets up to date and communicate that to the team.
Being open and adaptable is crucial. As is giving valuable feedback in a constructive way.
Attention to detail is important, as is seeing the big picture.
You get the point. No single person is perfect and has every one of these skills. It’s just impossible to be the perfect person. Yet I’ve seen something close to the perfect team in the past where we worked (hard) together but really wanted to get things done.”
Effective team structures
The findings of the paper suggest that effective team structures support teams with higher levels of emotional stability, agreeableness, extroversion, and conscientiousness personality traits.
” So, effective teams support people. Not at all unexpected. To ably support people great communication is needed (if not how do you know what people need?).
This is a world away from my current experience. A colleague just came from paternity leave, and nobody knew when they were coming back to work. Up until the day they reappeared. It’s like we are strangers showing up to work and just focus on our silo. I know this is the case at many companies, but it is something that needs to stop.”
How to improve tech
The Secret Developer has some ideas as to how tech firms can improve their communication and teamwork.
“Take a look at my ideal interview process. Build on that and target recruiting for soft skills (not at the expense of tech skills though, we still want people who can code).
Don’t focus on ‘years of experience’ as a metric for devs. Focus on ‘can get things done’.
It might take longer, and the short-termism of tech firms is something that needs to go into the trash.”
Conclusion
The paper underscores the importance of understanding personality traits, in forming effective agile software development teams. Having a mix of personality traits and fixing the diversity problem in tech would bring in more people with different opinions. That’s not going to be a bad thing in team building and staff retention.
” We still most focus on coding skills. The best coders should be coders. If only a firm were willing to actually develop their staff into great programmers…”