Universality of Egoless Behavior of Software Engineering Students

TL;DR

This study investigates the universality of egoless behavior among software engineering students across Japan, India, and Canada, highlighting cultural similarities and differences in egoless conduct during coding and general activities.

Contribution

It introduces a multi-stage approach to develop egoless behavior and provides empirical evidence of its universality across diverse cultural cohorts.

Findings

No significant difference in egoless behavior between Indian and Canadian students.

Indian and Japanese students find it more challenging to exhibit egoless behavior during coding.

Egoless behavior shows universality across different cultural groups.

Abstract

Software organizations have relied on process and technology initiatives to compete in a highly globalized world. Unfortunately, that has led to little or no success. We propose that the organizations start working on people initiatives, such as inspiring egoless behavior among software developers. This paper proposes a multi-stage approach to develop egoless behavior and discusses the universality of the egoless behavior by studying cohorts from three different countries, i.e., Japan, India, and Canada. The three stages in the approach are self-assessment, peer validation, and action plan development. The paper covers the first stage of self-assssment using an instrument based on Lamont Adams Ten commandments (factors) of egoless programming, seven of the factors are general, whereas three are related to coding behavior. We found traces of universality in the egoless behavior among the three cohorts such as there was no difference in egoless behaviours between Indian and Canadian cohorts and both Indian and Japanese cohorts had difficulties in behaving in egoless manner in coding activities than in general activities.