Communication Time in Extreme ProgrammingTeams: A Controlled Case Study

Abstract

Software development is a team-centered activity. However, there are a number of factors that affect a team’s productivity. Thus, understanding the team dynamics and the different factors that influence their working is essential to improving their productivity. One such key factor is the amount of time a team spends on communicating to completing their tasks. This paper reports on a small scale case study, of (eight participants in) four student groups, using extreme programming. The study was conducted in a controlled environment to study the factors that may affect a team communication time, during the implementation phase. We found communication time between team members of the same gender is the longest. However, forming a team with relatively equal experience and including a well documented pre-training reduces the communication time significantly