Influence of Belbin's Role on Database Design: An Exploratory Experiment

Software process has been studied from various perspectives, among them, the human factor is one of the most important due to the intrinsic social aspect of the discipline. This study aims to explore the benefits of using Belbin's role theory in tasks —team and individual— related to the software development process, particularly in Database Design (DB) Design. In this paper two controlled experiments with students are presented. In the first experiment integrated teams with compatible roles identified in the students and teams integrated through a traditional strategy were compared, during the task of DB conceptual design. In the second experiment, individual students were the experimental subjects, the performance of the Belbin roles identified in them were compared, in the task of the DB logical design. The dependent variables in both experiments were the effort in the task, and the quality of the generated design. Results in the first experiment did not show significant differences in both variables, a possible limitation was the complexity of the task. The second experiment also did not show significant differences in the effort variable; however, in the variable related to the quality of the logical design, the monitor-evaluator role presented significant differences when compared with the other six identified roles; these results are consistent with previous studies identified in the literature. We plan to continue experimenting with other tasks in order to get a deeper understanding of applying the Belbin’s theory in software process to accumulate experiences.