Soft Skills in Software Development Teams: A Survey of the Points of View of Team Leaders and Team Members

Besides technical knowledge and experience, the so-called "soft skills" of team members are also an important factor in software engineering projects. The study of this subject is gaining the attention of researchers and practitioners in recent years. In this paper we report a field study in which we interviewed 35 software engineering practitioners from software companies in Uruguay to know their points of view about what are the soft skills they consider the most valued to have by the leader and the other members of software development teams. As a result, Leadership, Communication skills, Customer orientation, Interpersonal skills, and Teamwork are the most valued for team leaders, while Analytic, problem-solving, Commitment, responsibility, Eagerness to learn, Motivation, and Teamwork are the most valued ones for team members.

I. Introduction

The topic of soft skills and its relevance in software engineering is gaining the attention of researchers and practitioners in recent years. This kind of skills are also known in literature as “non-technical skills”, “people skills”, “social skills”, “generic competencies”, or “human factors”.