Identifying the Impact of Team Size on Team Work Quality (TWQ) in Software Teams through an Empirical Approach

Author(s):  
Rajalakshmi Subramaniam ◽  
Senthilkumar Nakkeeran
2015 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 83-101
Author(s):  
Vladimiras Gražulis

In recent decades teamwork has become not only a  popular topic for public discussion, but also the focus of numerous scientific insights. The abundance of publications on this subject suggests that organizing teamwork has become one of the phenomena of organi‑ zational activity. On the other hand, based on his numerous research, the author of the paper raises the question of whether the concept of teamwork analysed in such publications is studied within the framework of scientific concepts. For instance, some authors believe that the only distinguishing feature of a team is an efficiently working group; the formation of the team is a long‑term process and to achieve this the group needs to undergo several stages of development (Hersey, Blanchard, Tuckman, Jensen, Katzenbach, Smith, Liker, Kasiulis, Barvydienė, Savanavičienė, Šilingienė, Gražulis); other authors use these concepts as synonyms (Boddy, Peiton) and analyse them in the context of formal and informal sta‑ tus. Thus, the concept of effective and ineffective teams has become the additional object of the research. Numerous researchers limit their research to the analysis of functional roles within well‑established teams (Benne, Sheats), at the same time neglecting the impact of personality traits on the activity of the work group. Specialists do not agree on the team size (Manz, Sims, Miller, Stoner et. al.), purpose (Meskon, Katzenbach, Smith, Sakalas et. al.), and periodically arising constraints on the team development and the like. As a result, scholars and practitioners perceive the issues of team work differently, thus they often talk at cross purposes. The author of the paper believes that it is expedient to consider the information collected up to now on the topic of teamwork within the overall context of the development of management science, which at the same time would provide for the development of conceptual theoretical proposals for scientific teamwork models (systems).


2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 185-193
Author(s):  
Dolors Masats ◽  
Paula Guerrero

Abstract Initiatives for teachers’ professional development should rely on the epistemology of practice, that is, be founded on the premise that reflective teachers construct professional knowledge and develop professional skills through practice and through planning, observing or analysing practice. Reflection about teaching action and reflection in teaching action triggers innovation, especially when teachers work together to create the necessary conditions to transform learning. This paper advocates in favour of collaborative action research and innovation as a methodology to promote change in classroom practices. To illustrate this proposal, it presents a case study in which a secondary English teacher from a school which hosts adolescents at risk opens her classrooms to a researcher and a group of pre-service teachers with the objective to reflect upon her own practices and to become an agent of change. Our corpus is made of natural audio-recorded data from the discussions emerging during focus-group sessions held to evaluate the ongoing innovation and interviews to participating secondary students and trainee teachers. The analysis of those interactions will first lead us to reflect upon the challenges of promoting change in the classrooms. Then it will allow us to understand the impact of the experience and argue in favour of a model of teacher education based on team work as a tool to acquire professional skills and guarantee students’ learning success.


Mathematics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 558
Author(s):  
David Valiente ◽  
Héctor Campello-Vicente ◽  
Emilio Velasco-Sánchez ◽  
Fernando Rodríguez-Mas ◽  
Nuria Campillo-Davo

University education approaches related to the field of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), have generally particularized on teaching activity and learning programs which are commonly understood as reoriented lessons that fuse theoretic concepts interweaved with practical activities. In this context, team work has been widely acknowledged as a means to conduct practical and hands-on lessons, and has been revealed to be successful in the achievement of exercise resolution and design tasks. Besides this, methodologies sustained by ICT resources such as online or blended approaches, have also reported numerous benefits for students’ active learning. However, such benefits have to be fully validated within the particular teaching context, which may facilitate student achievement to a greater or lesser extent. In this work, we analyze the impact of attendance modalities on the learning performance of a STEM-related course on “Machines and Mechanisms Theory”, in which practical lessons are tackled through a team work approach. The validity of the results is reinforced by group testing and statistical tests with a sample of 128 participants. Students were arranged in a test group (online attendance) and in a control group (face-to-face attendance) to proceed with team work during the practical lessons. Thus, the efficacy of distance and in situ methodologies is compared. Moreover, additional variables have also been compared according to the historical record of the course, in regards to previous academic years. Finally, students’ insights about the collaborative side of this program, self-knowledge and satisfaction with the proposal have also been reported by a custom questionnaire. The results demonstrate greater performance and satisfaction amongst participants in the face-to-face modality. Such a modality is prooven to be statistically significant for the final achievement of students in detriment to online attendance.


2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Uzma Hafeez ◽  
Waqar Akbar

Employees are major assets of every organization. The accomplishment of the industry depends on its employee performance. Therefore, upper management knows the significance of expense in training for the advantage of improving employee performance and also places them to get the challenges of the today’s competitive business environment. This research also aims to see the “Impact of Training on Employee Performance in Pharmaceutical Industry in Karachi Pakistan”, in which Training consider as independent whereas dependent variable ‘Employee Performance‘ having its Performance areas i.e.; demonstrating team work, communication skill, customer service, interpersonal relationship and reduced absenteeism and its Developments areas i.e.; job-satisfaction, employee motivation, new technologies, efficiencies in process and innovation in strategies as its levers. The paper presents a concise summary of the literature on the value of training in improving the performance of the employees. Four pharmaceutical companies are selected. A survey of 356 employees via self administrated questionnaire with the help of random sampling technique is conducted with the response rate of 96%. Two sets of hypothesis are developed which relate directly to the research questions. SPSS 19 is used to perform reliability, descriptive, correlation and regression analysis. The analysis shows a positive significant relationship between them and the results reveal that the more the employee gets training, the more efficient their level of performance would be. The last section of the paper concludes along with recommendation to give guidelines for future research.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (0) ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Huriye Armagan DOGAN

Memento value in heritage is one of the most essential characteristics facilitating the association between the environment and its users, by connecting structures with space and time, moreover, it helps people to identify their surroundings. However, the emergence of the Modern Movement in the architectural sphere disrupted the reflection of memory and symbols which serve to root the society in its language. Furthermore, it generated an approach that stood against the practice of referring to the past and tradition, which led to the built environment becoming homogeneous and deprived of memento value. This paper focuses on the impact of memento value on the perception and evaluation of cultural heritage. Furthermore, it investigates the notions which are perceived to influence the appraisal of cultural heritage by applying them to the Kaunas dialect of the Modern Movement with an empirical approach.


Author(s):  
Phillip W.J. Brook

This chapter explores the implications of knowledge sharing in an era of pervasive computing, and concludes that, perhaps counter-intuitively, people will need to come together more to establish the trust that is necessary for effective knowledge sharing. Practices such as team-work should result in closer ties between peers, and this relationship can encourage increased sharing of knowledge related to the work at hand. With the advent of pervasive computing, the question can be asked as to what the impact of this technology could/will have on the sharing of knowledge in a team situation. At the same time, the changing attitudes to how knowledge is acquired make it even more important that knowledge is acquired in its historical context, which may be best achieved by person-to-person knowledge transfer. It is argued that these social aspects will be more important in a world of pervasive computing than in conventional businesses.


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Naser Shirbagi ◽  
Parisa Gholami

PurposeIn this research, which has involved collecting Iranian faculty members' accounts of their experiences of sabbaticals, the authors are seeking to understand how faculty members make sense of events throughout the process of sabbatical, construction these events into episodes and thereby maintaining unity within their lives.Design/methodology/approachUsing narrative qualitative method and episodic interviews the researchers collected and analyzed the data by applying MAXQDA 2020 software. In this study, the impact of sabbatical leave on faculty members' academic achievement was measured in three ways: individually, professionally and organizationally.FindingsSabbatical leave changed their academic and personal values. In addition, the results of the narrative analysis showed that sabbatical leave experience could enable faculty members to change themselves in terms of their lifestyle and attitudes. A considerable influence on their families was also found. Moreover, from individual dimension, it was found that participants' engagement with their colleagues and their sense of social responsibility especially in environmental protection zone area had increased. Furthermore, in professional and academic area, the participants reported tendency toward more team work, more creative approach and they developed a sense of innovation and willingness to take risks.Practical implicationsThe findings of the study showed that faculty members sabbatical leave experience could stimulate their global thinking toward foreign overseas universities, their students and colleagues and they could have more publications in foreign languages. Based on the findings of the study some reconsiderations in administrative regulations should be taken into account in order to enable volunteer faculty members to take part in sabbatical leave programs.Social implicationsThe authors demonstrate that how Iranian higher education regulations and dominated patriarchy, deprive female faculty members from sabbaticals. In addition, the results indicate that using sabbatical leaves by males, and mostly in STEM fields in Iran are fundamental in producing and reproducing inequalities regarding gender and academic field.Originality/valueThe paper addresses an important topic and by using a relevant qualitative method for examining participants' views in the study has added complementary information to the literature of faculty members' professional development. The study has been conducted in a particular context with a different understanding of the topic, since studying such a topic in Iran is missing almost in the literature.


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