TY - GEN
T1 - The Type to Take Out a Loan? A Study of Developer Personality and Technical Debt
AU - Graf-Vlachy, Lorenz
AU - Wagner, Stefan
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 IEEE.
PY - 2023
Y1 - 2023
N2 - Background: Technical debt (TD) has been widely discussed in software engineering research, and there is an emerging literature linking it to developer characteristics. However, developer personality has not yet been studied in this context. Aims and Method: We explore the relationship between various personality traits (Five Factor Model, regulatory focus, and narcissism) of developers and the introduction and removal of TD. To this end, we complement an existing TD dataset with novel self-report personality data gathered by surveying developers, and analyze 2,145 commits from 19 developers. Results: We find that conscientiousness, emotional stability, openness to experience, and prevention focus are negatively associated with TD. There were no significant results for extraversion, agreeableness, promotion focus, or narcissism. Conclusions: We take our results as first evidence that developer personality has a systematic influence on the introduction and removal of TD. This has implications not only for future research, which could, for example, study the effects of personality on downstream consequences of TD like defects, but also for software engineering practitioners who may, for example, consider developer personality in staffing decisions.
AB - Background: Technical debt (TD) has been widely discussed in software engineering research, and there is an emerging literature linking it to developer characteristics. However, developer personality has not yet been studied in this context. Aims and Method: We explore the relationship between various personality traits (Five Factor Model, regulatory focus, and narcissism) of developers and the introduction and removal of TD. To this end, we complement an existing TD dataset with novel self-report personality data gathered by surveying developers, and analyze 2,145 commits from 19 developers. Results: We find that conscientiousness, emotional stability, openness to experience, and prevention focus are negatively associated with TD. There were no significant results for extraversion, agreeableness, promotion focus, or narcissism. Conclusions: We take our results as first evidence that developer personality has a systematic influence on the introduction and removal of TD. This has implications not only for future research, which could, for example, study the effects of personality on downstream consequences of TD like defects, but also for software engineering practitioners who may, for example, consider developer personality in staffing decisions.
KW - Big Five
KW - five factor model
KW - narcissism
KW - personality
KW - regulatory focus
KW - Technical debt
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85169465815&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/TechDebt59074.2023.00010
DO - 10.1109/TechDebt59074.2023.00010
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85169465815
T3 - Proceedings - 2023 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Technical Debt, TechDebt 2023
SP - 27
EP - 36
BT - Proceedings - 2023 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Technical Debt, TechDebt 2023
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
T2 - 6th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Technical Debt, TechDebt 2023
Y2 - 14 May 2023 through 15 May 2023
ER -