Description

In today’s world of digital revolution, Information technology has become vital and an integral part of organisations. Organisations are increasingly depending on improving productivity through technology solutions leading to the role of the software development team becoming important. It has become increasingly important to understand which characteristics within a software development team significantly influence performance.
The purpose of this research was to analyse whether the following three characteristics: (1) the lack of commitment to development timelines; (2) the inattention to delivering quality software and (3) the avoidance of accountability, can be considered as predictors of a dysfunctional software development team. This quantitative theory study will be built upon a framework based on the findings process and introduce new literature for the apparent gap created in where no empirical attention or studies have been established in literature that exists in identifying the characteristics of a dysfunctional software development team.
The participants numbered 185, and were a combination of information technology managers, software architects, software developers and software testers, from large, medium and small sized organizations. The research is not limited to a specific geographical zone, and therefore the research findings will be relevant to a global audience.
The research demonstrated that a correlation exists between (1) the lacks of commitment to development timelines; (2) the inattention to delivering quality software, and (3) the avoidance of accountability and this negatively impacted the performance of a software development team. The research corroborated that these three characteristics are predictors of a dysfunctional software development team.
This research makes a contribution to this effort: the advancement of identifying three characteristics that, if present