The Impact of Team Diversity in Agile Development Education

2025-09-10

AI Summary

This study investigates how gender and nationality diversity influence the quality of team project outcomes in agile software development courses. To address this, we employ three diversity indices and apply both correlation analysis and multivariate regression modeling—constituting the first empirical examination of these two diversity dimensions and their interaction within an educational context. Results indicate a statistically significant positive association between gender diversity and project quality; nationality diversity alone shows no significant main effect; however, a modest negative interaction effect emerges when both diversities co-occur, likely attributable to latent communication barriers. The study’s key contributions include (1) developing a multidimensional diversity measurement framework tailored to computing education, and (2) revealing the nonlinear, context-dependent nature of diversity effects on learning outcomes. These findings provide empirically grounded guidance for team formation and diversity management in university-level agile development instruction.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: Teamwork, Team formation
• Multiagent Systems: Teamwork
• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurements
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Fairness, privacy, and diversity in economic environments
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Practical large-scale studies of user experience

Abstract

Software Engineering is mostly a male-dominated sector, where gender diversity is a key feature for improving equality of opportunities, productivity, and innovation. Other diversity aspects, including but not limited to nationality and ethnicity, are often understudied.In this work we aim to assess the impact of team diversity, focusing mainly on gender and nationality, in the context of an agile software development project-based course. We analyzed 51 teams over three academic years, measuring three different Diversity indexes - regarding Gender, Nationality and their co-presence - to examine how different aspects of diversity impact the quality of team project outcomes.Statistical analysis revealed a moderate, statistically significant correlation between gender diversity and project success, aligning with existing literature. Diversity in nationality showed a negative but negligible effect on project results, indicating that promoting these aspects does not harm students' performance. Analyzing their co-presence within a team, gender and nationality combined had a negative impact, likely due to increased communication barriers and differing cultural norms.This study underscores the importance of considering multiple diversity dimensions and their interactions in educational settings. Our findings, overall, show that promoting diversity in teams does not negatively impact their performance and achievement of educational goals.

Problem

• Assessing gender and nationality diversity impact on agile teams
• Examining how diversity indexes affect project outcome quality
• Analyzing multiple diversity dimensions interactions in education

Innovation

• Gender diversity correlation with project success
• Nationality diversity negligible negative effect
• Combined diversity dimensions increase communication barriers