Analysis of team effectiveness in software development teams working on hardware and software environments using Belbin Self‐perception Inventory

Abstract

Purpose

Aims to present a team effectiveness analysis of software development teams and one means of improving the effectiveness of software development teams in quite an innovative manner, namely, by forming teams based on who can work effectively together.

Design/methodology/approach

The team roles described by R. Meredith Belbin are utilized to improve the effectiveness of software development teams The procedure used in these analyses consists of: finding teams that indicate a commitment to, or interest in, participating in an analysis of their team; having all team members fill out the Belbin Self‐perception Inventory in order to gather data for analysis; interviewing the leader of the team in order to obtain an independent analysis and verification of the self‐perception data; analyzing the self‐perception data, looking for trends in the data from which subjective assessments can be made; Comparing the Belbin analysis with the interview information, identifying similarities and differences between the two, thus providing verification of the Belbin analysis.

Findings

Analyses of software development teams from within the industry demonstrate that Belbin's roles and the Belbin self‐perception inventory can be used to recognize important positive and negative features of a team. Thus, positive features can be encouraged, and negative features can be avoided or remedied.

Originality/value

This paper would be useful to managers and team leaders of software development industries to analyze their team and to bring out superior efforts of forming the team to get the work done.

Citation

Rajendran, M. (2005), "Analysis of team effectiveness in software development teams working on hardware and software environments using Belbin Self‐perception Inventory", Journal of Management Development, Vol. 24 No. 8, pp. 738-753. https://doi.org/10.1108/02621710510613753