Win-for-all in software engineering education: Balancing social dilemmas to foster collaboration

Abstract

Software engineering is a highly collaborative process. However, we still lack knowledge on how to collaborate successfully. A main barrier to successful collaboration emerges due to social dilemmas that can be traced back to a profound tension between what is desirable for a collective as a whole, e. g. a software development team, and what is desirable for an individual, e. g. a single coder. This position paper introduces the concept of win-for-all (winn) and applies it to software engineering education. winn is an all-purpose pattern of thought for group processes with the aim to optimally balance individual and group needs. Thus, winn is a prerequisite for sustainable and high-quality performance of the whole group, the latter being a central issue for software engineering. High-level performance can only be achieved through a systemic perspective: both, the group and the individual (as a fundamental element of the group) have to be considered. Consequently, there is also still a lot of potential for teaching and improving collaboration in software engineering education.