The Psychology of Programming in the Large: Team and Organizational Behaviour

Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on the psychology of programming in relation to team and organizational behavior. Software development must be studied at several behavioural levels. Organizing programmers into teams superimposes a layer of social behavior on the cognitive requirements of programming tasks. Two structures have been proposed for programming teams based on the centralized versus decentralized team organizations often studied in group dynamics research. A hybrid approach to structuring programming teams might be taken on large projects that have characteristics favourable to different types of programming teams. Programming team activities offer many opportunities for peer review activities that may be formal or informal components of the development process. On the other hand, team methodologies must focus on coordinating the tasks and product concept. The structure of programming teams should reflect the nature of the task rather than the organization, allow members to speak as if with one mind, and determine the tasks the team can effectively handle.

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