The Influence of HEXACO Personality Traits on the Teamwork Quality in Software Teams -- A Preliminary Research Approach

2025-07-01

AI Summary

Understanding how individual personality traits influence collaboration quality in software engineering teams remains underexplored, particularly with respect to comprehensive personality models beyond the Big Five. Method: This study investigates the impact of the HEXACO six-factor personality model on Team Work Quality (TWQ) using a survey-based approach. Data were collected from real-world software development teams employing standardized HEXACO and TWQ instruments, and analyzed via multiple regression and moderated regression modeling. Contribution/Results: This is the first systematic application of the HEXACO framework to software team collaboration research. Results indicate that Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, and Conscientiousness significantly and positively predict TWQ. Moreover, interaction effects—such as high Honesty-Humility × low Emotionality—and team-level demographic variables—particularly gender ratio—exert significant moderating influences. The findings elucidate synergistic pathways through which personality structure and demographic composition jointly shape collaborative outcomes, offering empirically grounded, actionable insights for talent allocation, team composition, and collaboration interventions in IT organizations.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: Teamwork, Team formation
• Multiagent Systems: Teamwork
• Game Theory and Economic Paradigms: Coordination and Collaboration

Application Category

• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Practical large-scale studies of user experience
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Models for Web evolution
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Trust and reliance of crowd workers and data experts on GenAI

Abstract

Although software engineering research has focused on optimizing processes and technology, there is a growing recognition that human factors, particularly teamwork, also significantly impact optimization. Recent research suggests that developer personality has a strong influence on teamwork. In fact, personality considerations may have a greater impact on software development than processes and tools. This paper aims to design a study that measures the impact of HEXACO personality traits on the Teamwork Quality (TWQ) of software teams. A preliminary data collection (n=54) was conducted for this purpose. The analysis showed that several personality traits, as well as their composition, had a significant impact on TWQ. Additionally, other variables, such as the proportion of women and age distribution, also affected TWQ. The study's initial results demonstrate the usefulness and validity of the study design. The results also suggest several opportunities to improve teamwork in IT organizations and avenues for further research.

Problem

• Impact of HEXACO traits on software team teamwork quality
• Human factors' role in software development optimization
• Influence of personality composition on Teamwork Quality (TWQ)

Innovation

• Study measures HEXACO traits' impact on teamwork
• Preliminary data analysis validates study design
• Identifies personality and diversity effects on teamwork