What can developers' messages tell us? A psycholinguistic analysis of Jazz teams' attitudes and behavior patterns

TL;DR

This study applies psycholinguistic analysis to developer messages in Jazz teams, revealing how team attitudes and behaviors evolve over project phases and are influenced by task types, with implications for project management and tool design.

Contribution

It introduces the use of behavioral psychology techniques in software engineering to analyze communication artifacts and track attitude and behavior changes over project duration.

Findings

Highest engagement at project start and end

Team collectiveness increases over time

Attitudes vary with task nature

Abstract

Reports that communication and behavioral issues contribute to inadequately performing software teams have fuelled a wealth of research aimed at understanding the human processes employed during software development. The increasing level of interest in human issues is particularly relevant for agile and global software development approaches that emphasize the importance of people and their interactions during projects. While mature analysis techniques in behavioral psychology have been recommended for studying such issues, particularly when using archives and artifacts, these techniques have rarely been used in software engineering research. We utilize these techniques under an embedded case study approach to examine whether IBM Rational Jazz practitioners' behaviors change over project duration and whether certain tasks affect teams' attitudes and behaviors. We found highest levels of project engagement at project start and completion, as well as increasing levels of team collectiveness as projects progressed. Additionally, Jazz practitioners were most insightful and perceptive at the time of project scoping. Further, Jazz teams' attitudes and behaviors varied in line with the nature of the tasks they were performing. We explain these findings and discuss their implications for software project governance and tool design.