Software Quality as Influenced by Informational Diversity, Task Conflict, and Learning in Project Teams

    Authors

    T. P. Liang; J. Jiang; G. S. Klein;J. Y. C. Liu

    Comments

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    Abbreviated Journal Title

    IEEE Trans. Eng. Manage.

    Keywords

    Informational diversity; learning; project management; project teams; relationship conflict; software development; task conflict; TOP MANAGEMENT TEAMS; ORGANIZATIONAL GROUPS; WORK TEAMS; PERFORMANCE; DEMOGRAPHY; KNOWLEDGE; DESIGN; MODEL; Business; Engineering, Industrial; Management

    Abstract

    From one perspective, diversity leads to an increase in the knowledge and viewpoints that adds to the creativity of the solution and methods during a software development project. From another perspective, diversity adds to the conflict in a project team, which detracts significantly from the desired results. This contradiction may be best explained by an examination of different forms of diversity. This study reports a model that considers informational diversity, in the form of a larger variety of background knowledge, in the system development context. Learning and information theories dictate that conflict related to the completion of tasks will increase under informational diversity. Task-related conflict should, in turn, create learning opportunities, which will provide the spark needed to improve the quality of the software generated by a project team. A team level analysis of survey data from 299 members of 75 development teams confirms these relationships. The promotion of learning leverages the benefits of informational diversity and serves as a mediator between task-related conflict and software quality.

    Journal Title

    Ieee Transactions on Engineering Management

    Volume

    57

    Issue/Number

    3

    Publication Date

    1-1-2010

    Document Type

    Article

    Language

    English

    First Page

    477

    Last Page

    487

    WOS Identifier

    WOS:000282543900010

    ISSN

    0018-9391

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