EFFECT OF SOCIABILITY AND CURIOSITY OF SENIOR DEVELOPERS IN BUILDING AGILE SCRUM TEAM COMPETENCY

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International Journal of Software Engineering & Applications (IJSEA), Vol.13, No.5, September 2022

DOI: 10.5121/ijsea.2022.13501 1

EFFECT OF SOCIABILITY AND CURIOSITY OF

SENIOR DEVELOPERS IN BUILDING AGILE

SCRUM TEAM COMPETENCY

Ravi Kalluri

Department of Engineering Management & Systems Engineering,

Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia, USA

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to investigate the mechanisms that contribute to propagation of competence in an Agile

Scrum team. This study seeks to challenge the traditional view of bounded rationality (BR). An Agile Scrum

team (Team) is expected to build problem solving competence quickly as the expected ramp up time

continues to shrink. But the team has a mixture of expertise, competence and sociability levels that affect

out-of-the-box performance. The objective is to expand BR into the social realm and see how teams can

self-organize and reconfigure to allow effective problem solving. Studies have shown that agent-based

computational simulation is an appropriate technique to explore this point from a theoretical perspective.

(Fioretti, 2013) (Secchi, 2015). The first step is to define the problem, discuss how senior team members

exhibit high curiosity and apply sociability and cognitive resources to develop overall team competence.

This dynamic is modeled and simulated in NetLogoR and the results are analyzed. Finally, some key

findings are presented and discussed.

KEYWORDS

ABS, Agent Based Modeling, NetLogo, Teams, Agile, Scrum, Knowledge Management

1. INTRODUCTION

This study explores how the curiosity and sociability traits, if present in the senior developers of

an Agile Scrum team, can improve team wide problem-solving competence. This paper

introduces a refined version of Bounded Rationality (BR) that is socially oriented (Simon, 1993).

In particular, it makes the distinction between senior developers who operate within the

boundaries of their team (i.e. sociable) and those who extend their reach outside of those

boundaries and norms (i.e. curious). An existing agent-based simulation model is repurposed

where agents represent developers and user stories. A key trait for agent developer is competence

while a key trait for agent story is difficulty.

The curiosity and sociability traits of a senior developer are expected to combine team member

competences in a way that makes problem solving more efficient. This is due to the

understanding that the integration of knowledge from the various team members is done non-

linearly, i.e. exponentially increasing or decreasing the original knowledge base of the curious

senior developers. Conversely, other non-curious senior developers would combine competences

in a linear fashion, and this makes knowledge integration more directly dependent on the existing

competences (preferred to be at higher level). In other words, curiosity may add an emergent

element to team competence that is not included in the original knowledge base of each team

member. This synergy has the potential to dramatically increase the efficiency of knowledge

integration and resilience in an Agile Scrum team when dealing with complex problems.

International Journal of Software Engineering & Applications (IJSEA), Vol.13, No.5, September 2022

The paper shows how the traits of sociability and curiosity enable senior members in an Agile

Scrum team to collaborate with junior team members in completing user stories and in the

process raise the overall team competence. It shows that BR can be considered as a social process

and the simulation of team dynamics reveals how social attitudes can aid in problem solving.

The paper is structured as follows. Section 1 provides an introduction. Section 2 presents the

theoretical background and literature review relevant to the study, supporting reasons for inquiry,

and contextual background. Section 3 discusses the Agent Based Simulation model. Section 4

describes the procedures, data analysis and simulation results. Section 5 discusses the

implications, future work and concludes the paper. This is followed by references and an

appendix.

2. RELATED WORK

2.1. Bounded Rationality (BR)

Simon (1955, 1997) posited that rationality is always bounded in the sense that a decision is made

regardless of all the alternatives that are available. That is because of the inherently limited

alternatives available in any given situation (March, 1994) (Simon, 1997). The limitations forced

upon our rationality by our inherent boundedness prevent us from selecting the optimal set of

means (Secchi, 2016). This limits our ability to effectively solve complex problems. The result is

we end up creating new problems. For example, figuring out how to increase cooperation in a

team is a complex goal. According to Simon, it is not possible to take the goal and work

backwards to derive the sequence of the right means, as the traditional view on BR would

assume. The manner in which the team members need to engage with each other and with the

environment has to be atypical in order to find a potential solution. (Chia and Holt, 2009)

(Secchi, 2016).

Simon (1955, 1997) suggests that engagement with the environment is central to BR as a source

of resources. There is a tendency exhibited by certain agents (members of a team) who rely more

on gaining competency through social channels by watching the senior team members. The

context of “social channels” has changed with the advent of the internet (Secchi, 2011) (Magnani

et al., 2007). Competency can be gained by direct consultation with a team member or by

technological instruments (i.e. smartphones) or services (i.e. social media like Facebook or

Twitter, Google search, etc.).

A senior developer (senior team member) who is sociable, prefers to make decisions assuming

the existence of a social group to refer to. (Bardone, 2011) (Secchi and Bardone, 2009, 2013).

Therefore, sociable individuals intrinsically take a more collaborative stance on decision-making.

When this sociability trait is exhibited by the senior team members, there is rapid diffusion of

competence to the novice team members. This enables faster build-up of overall team

effectiveness in solving problems (completing user stories).

Lalsing (2012) studied three different sized Agile teams developing products based on the same

technologies and using Scrum. Both objective and subjective measures were used and the results

are supported by a survey. The results clearly show that for agile methodologies to work well, it

is crucial to select the “right” people for the right team.

However, the variety of ways in which an agent (sociable, senior developer) may actually engage

with the other team members is not fully understood. The impact of sociability is well

substantiated when interactions within a group are stable and well-defined, but it is unclear how

International Journal of Software Engineering & Applications (IJSEA), Vol.13, No.5, September 2022

much this concept is useful when groups are formed ad hoc or when the decision maker reaches

out to members of other groups (the environment).

The motivation for creation is higher for the agent as it leads to competency gain and external

recognition. The internal sharing of information, on the other hand, develops the team as a whole

but eats into the time for personal advancement and also narrows the competency gap with more

junior developers. With such complex psychological forces at work, it is hard to assess whether

the notion of sociability can really have an impact on the way in which bounded agents may

really act. There is thus a need to define a more inclusive term “curiosity” for the specific type of

engagement that the agent has with the environment and the team. A curious agent is

continuously learning by enquiry and openly exploring ideas and decisions with the team and

environment using the available social channels.

The notion of curiosity is not aligned with the extant view on BR because it prompts the agent to

learn from open-ended explorations of complex problems and to accept the complexity of

decision-making. Curiosity has been referred to as an “openness to cognitive diversity” (Klein

and Kozlowski, 2000) and “cross-understanding” (Meslec and Graff, 2015). Curiosity allows the

team member (agent) to cross existing boundaries of cooperation to form new knowledge

associations for both personal and team interests.

2.2. Sociability and Curiosity

Sociability places importance on the information provided by social channels and an inclination

for individuals to share ideas with like-minded people and collaborate. (Simon, 1993) (Knudsen,

2003). But sociability refers to situations in which a person works with other people on

something that is mostly defined. Thomsen (2016) explains this concept with teams of medical

doctors and nurses in the emergency room of a hospital. The ER team members are sociable

individuals as they tend to work within boundaries that are set beforehand. This is a worldview

specifying already accepted templates of thinking along with the identification of specific and

well-defined problems and issues to deal with. Sociability can lead to formation of tight

couplings among team members and, possibly, an entire organization but there is a risk that the

organization becomes unfit to learn and adapt to the changing external environment (Rivkin,

2000), reaching what Siggelkow and Rivkin (2005) call “sticking points”.

Curiosity, on the other hand, breaks preset patterns of behavior and allows individuals to see

unexpected connections among apparently unrelated things (Bardone, 2011). From a social point

of view, curious individuals reach out to others to explore problems more broadly (beyond the

immediate team) and facilitate a solution (Secchi, 2011). The way these individuals interact with

others is oriented toward gaining a better understanding of the problem at hand. Their use of

information is not simply the sum of what is available from others but a restructuring of available

expertise to find the best solution. The focus is on gaining new knowledge and understanding by

interacting with the social environment. If sociability allows self-organization to emerge within a

team, curiosity has the potential to establish new consortiums, both within and outside the team.

This is necessary to build a resilient team. This is in contrast with the literature on “shared

cognition” (Cannon-Bowers et al., 1993) (Cannon-Bowers and Salas, 2001) (McAvoy and Butler,

2007), where individuals share a mental model or group think to make the team more effective.

Curiosity requires openness to learning and engaging with other people regardless of their

background, position and role within an organization and may lead to better problem-solving.

From this perspective, curiosity serves as a catalyst to sociability and makes team self-

organization and resilience possible. The next section discusses how the sociability enhanced by

curiosity of senior team members (agents with high competence) helps in building overall team

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摘要：

InternationalJournalofSoftwareEngineering&Applications(IJSEA),Vol.13,No.5,September2022DOI:10.5121/ijsea.2022.135011EFFECTOFSOCIABILITYANDCURIOSITYOFSENIORDEVELOPERSINBUILDINGAGILESCRUMTEAMCOMPETENCYRaviKalluriDepartmentofEngineeringManagement&SystemsEngineering,OldDominionUniversity,Norfolk,Virgini...

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EFFECT OF SOCIABILITY AND CURIOSITY OF SENIOR DEVELOPERS IN BUILDING AGILE SCRUM TEAM COMPETENCY

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