Influence of team roles in software measurement: A replicated experiment

Abstract

This article presents a replicated experiment in which the convenience of using the Belbin Role Theory for the integration of work teams with the task of measuring the software is studied. The study was developed in an academic environment with first-year students of the software engineering career and analyzes the differences between the metrics obtained with the Function Point Analysis Technique, by teams integrated with the Belbin Theory, and those obtained by teams integrated with students selected randomly. The results regarding the Function Points variable showed significant differences, its result contrasts with that obtained in the previous study, in which the general analysis of the FP did not show statistically significant differences. On the other hand, regarding the metric associated with the process, in this case, the time that the teams used to carry out the task, the results also contrast with the first experiment, since no statistically significant differences were found between the two types of team conformation (Belbin Teams and Traditional Teams). The contrasting results in both experiments motivate us to continue the comparative analysis between the treatments for the factor related to the conformation of work teams.