Female Leadership in Software Projects: A Preliminary Result on Leadership Style and Project Context Factors

TL;DR

This study explores how female leaders in software projects adapt their leadership styles based on project context factors, highlighting correlations between leadership perception and task management in a longitudinal case study.

Contribution

It provides initial insights into the relationship between leadership style, team perception, and project context factors for women in software leadership roles.

Findings

Strong correlation between perceived team leadership and task management.

Potential link between human-oriented and task-oriented leadership approaches based on customer involvement.

Preliminary evidence from a longitudinal multiple case study.

Abstract

Women have been shown to be effective leaders in many team-based situations. However, it is also well-recognized that women are underrepresented in engineering and technology areas, which leads to wasted efforts and a lack of diversity in professional organizations. Although studies about gender and leadership are rich, research focusing on engineering-specific activities, are scarce. To react on this gap, we explored the experience of female leaders of software development projects and possible context factors that influence leadership effectiveness. The study was conducted as a longitudinal multiple case study. Data was collected from survey, interviews, observation and project reports. In this work, we reported some preliminary findings related to leadership style, team perception on leadership and team-task context factors. We found a strong correlation between perceived team leadership and task management. We also observed a potential association between human-oriented leading approach in low customer involvement scenarios and task-oriented leading approach in high customer involvement situations.