The impact of turbulence on the effectiveness and efficiency of software development teams in small organizations

This article presents an agent-based simulation study that explores the effects of team behavior on the efficiency and effectiveness of software development organizations that pursue incremental and iterative processes such as the Rational Unified Process (RUP). The conceptual model underlying the simulation framework is based on the fundamental tenets of organization theory. We present the simulation framework Team-RUP and use it to examine (a) which team archetypes and associated organizational cooperation mechanisms are effective in incremental and iterative software development strategies such as the RUP and (b) the extent of the impact of turbulence (i.e. change in requirements and employee turnover) on the effectiveness of software development under various team archetypes in small organizations. Using the model, we observe that ‘agility’ via incremental and iterative development strategy is a valid and useful counterbalance to the inevitable change involved in most software projects. Also, we observe that the autonomous and concurrent team archetypes are better suited for large, rather than small, enterprises. We believe that the findings reported in this study form the basis for future hypotheses that will facilitate further empirical studies on software team behavior. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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