Studying Team Evolution during Software Testing

Software development teams are one of the most dynamic entities of any software development project. While the individuals are assigned planned roles at the start of any project, during the course of the project, the team constitution, structure, relationships and roles change. Such changes are often spontaneous and constitute the evolution of the team along different phases of the software development lifecycle. As software development is a team effort, these dynamics may have a significant effect on the development lifecycle itself. This work is aimed at studying the evolution of project teams and gathering insights that can be correlated with project health and outcomes. In this study we apply social network analysis techniques to investigate team evolution in a project in its testing phase. While the questions and insights that we investigate in this paper are valid and useful for all phases of the software development lifecycle, we have focused on software testing phase as it one of the most critical phases in the lifecycle. Our work aims to provide insights in the changes in team interactions and individual roles as the testing process continues and can help find if the same is aligned to the planned and desired project behavior.