A Study of the Organizational Dynamics of Software Teams

Large-scale software is developed by teams of engineers that work together. The teams' compositions change all the time, with engineers continuously leaving and joining. Learning about these organizational dynamics is vital to understanding how engineers acquire technical skills and business relationships throughout their career. In addition, since employee turnover can be costly to team morale and productivity, it is important for management to learn how to proactively guide the process. In this paper, we report on a study of a professional software development organization in which engineers switch teams frequently. We learned what causes engineers to consider leaving their teams, why they leave, how they learn about new teams, and how they decide which team to join. We also quantify the perceived costs and benefits of recent moves made by the engineers. In addition to reporting the answers to our research questions, we interpret our results to offer recommendations to engineers and their managers on how to ensure that both make better, happier team moves.