Dear Huw,
Thank you for your relevant question; I don't see it as criticism at
all. There should be no dogmas in science.
Your statement is right, NT types are abundant among software
developers. But ST types are even more prevalent. Given that there are
more ST than NT types among the general population, the percentage of NT
software engineers stands out.
Nevertheless, there are significant discrepancies in the distributions
and percentages of software engineers across the 16 MBTI types.
Moreover, the software engineering profession has diversified
enormously in the last 20 years, compared to mainly computational
programming of 30-40 years ago, thus attracting myriad types of people
performing specialized jobs. Those discrepancies tend to be exacerbated.
Now, trying to answer your question....
I am an advocate for cross-disciplinary research and borrowing
perspectives from other areas, which give us the potential to address
important issues in software engineering, thus should be encouraged.
Please take a look at:
http://www.eng.uwo.ca/people/lcapretz/Capretz-HF-IEEE-v2.pdf
However, when it comes to human beings, things get really complicated.
Psychology is there to help us.
Regards,
Luiz Fernando Capretz
http://www.eng.uwo.ca/people/lcapretz/
On 06/02/2015 5:30 PM, Huw Lloyd wrote:
Thank you for sharing your work, Luiz.
It's interesting that MBTI remains a strong typological schema. If I
recall my MBTI distributions correctly, the high percentages of "NT"
personalities represents an impressive concentration.
Perhaps for the sake of this quiet list-serve, are you able to
elaborate on a question I was considering whilst skimming your paper,
please. In your final considerations, you (collectively) write:
"the amount of research on the effects and influences of personality
in the field is relatively small. The evidence is weak and in many
cases inconclusive. More research is required if we want results that
can influence the practice of software development."
My question is, what influence does personality research in the
contexts of various practices have, i.e. are there examples of
transformative contributions? I have witnessed personality-based
knowledge being usefully applied at an interpersonal (consulting)
level, but the impression I have is that perhaps you have something
broader in mind (such as interviewing for personality types etc)?
I intend no criticism in the question, I'm merely curious.
Best,
Huw
On 6 February 2015 at 20:03, Luiz Fernando Capretz <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Dear Colleagues,
I thought you’d be interested in a systematic literature review on
human factors and personalities in software engineering along the
past 40 years.
I am providing you with the following article link, which allows
free access to the article:
http://authors.elsevier.com/a/1QQJw2f~UVqMl5
<http://authors.elsevier.com/a/1QQJw2f%7EUVqMl5>
Please use this link to download a personal copy of your article
if you are interested in that topic; you are also welcome to email
the link to other colleagues.
Anyone who clicks on the link until 14^th /March/2015 - no sign up
or registration is needed - just click and read!
Luiz Fernando Capretz, Ph.D., P.Eng.
Professor of Software Engineering
Assistant Dean (IT & e-Learning)
Western University
Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering
Thompson Engineering Building (TEB 345)
London, Ontario, Canada - N6A5B9
http://www.eng.uwo.ca/people/lcapretz/
Tel. 1 519 6612111 x85482 <tel:1%20519%206612111%20x85482>, Fax 1
519 8502436 <tel:1%20519%208502436>
