On the Economic Implications of Diversity in Software Engineering

TL;DR

This study explores how software professionals perceive the economic benefits of diversity in teams, highlighting its role in cost, innovation, and market competitiveness based on qualitative interviews.

Contribution

It provides the first qualitative insights into practitioners' views on the economic implications of diversity in software engineering.

Findings

Diversity is linked to cost reduction and revenue generation.

Practitioners see diversity as a practical resource for project success.

Perceptions are grounded in concrete project experiences.

Abstract

This paper investigates how software professionals perceive the economic implications of diversity in software engineering teams. Motivated by a gap in software engineering research, which has largely emphasized socio-technical and process-related outcomes, we adopted a qualitative interview approach to capture practitioners' reasoning about diversity in relation to economic and market-oriented considerations. Based on interviews with ten software professionals, our analysis indicates that diversity is perceived as economically relevant through its associations with cost reduction and containment, revenue generation, time to market, process efficiency, innovation, and market alignment. Participants typically grounded these perceptions in concrete project experiences rather than abstract economic reasoning, framing diversity as a practical resource that supports project delivery, competitiveness, and organizational viability. Our findings provide preliminary empirical insights into how economic aspects of diversity are understood in software engineering practice.