The Human Factor in Software Engineering

A great and recent literature overview about group performance can be found here:

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Teams are not always more efficient than individuals. Whether they are depends on

• the task type,
• process losses by coordination loss, production blocking and motivation loss,
• but also on motivation gain by social competition + social compensation + Köhler effect,
• individual capability gains and losses,
• leadership style
• group composition,
• group synchronization, and
• group learning.

The article discusses research findings and draws conclusions for practical work.