Recommendations to the Adoption of New Software Practices: A Case Study of Team Intention and Behavior in Three Software Companies

It is believed that people consider the implications of their actions and act based on a reasonable assessment of those implications. In this context, belief can be defined as a state of mind that embodies trust and confidence in something. So, behavior is driven by what is believed, by what is culturally assumed to be true about the world. Our work aims to study and characterize a belief system of software project teams to understand the beliefs underlying an intention or practice, and seek answers about how people progress from intention to behavior in software engineering environments. We applied a behavioral theory in terms of organizational and team level factors associated to beliefs about the software development practices. A set of interviews on origins, sources and impacts of beliefs on software practices was conducted with professionals from different project teams and companies. The results point out a strong influence of past experiences and repeated behavior on software development practices of project teams. Also, we list a set of practical recommendations for software companies that are dealing with the challenges of adopting new practices on software projects.