Kyungsub Steve Choi

Exploring the underlying aspects of pair programming: The impact of personality

With the recent advent of agile software process methods, a number of seldom used and unorthodox practices have come to the forefront in the field of computer programming. One such practice is that of pair programming, which is characterized by two programmers sharing the same computer for collaborative programming purposes. The very nature of pair programming implies a psychological and social interaction between the participating programmers and thus brings into play a unique element that we do not see with the conventional individual programming model. This paper focuses on the effects that one of these psychosocial factors, a programmers personality type, may have on the pair programming environment. In this study, a group of university students, 68 undergraduate students and 60 masters degree graduate students, each of whom had been personality type profiled using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) model, was split into three sub-groups. One group consisted of subjects who were alike in MBTI type. Another group consisted of subjects who were opposite to each other in MBTI type, and the last group was comprised of subjects who were diverse - partially alike and partially opposite - in MBTI type. Through two pair programming sessions, the pairs in each group were assessed for their output, in code productivity. The result showed that the sub-group of subjects who were diverse in MBTI type exhibited higher productivity than both alike and opposite groups. In a comparison between alike and opposite groups, the productivity of the opposite group was greater than that of the alike group.

Pair dynamics in team collaboration

From a recent field survey with a group of professional pair programmers, it was revealed that the programmers perceive a partners personality, cognitive style and communication skills as the top three factors that lead to prudent pair programming. Based on this finding, the factors personality and communication skills, along with gender were selected for an experiment to analyze if a partners human, intrinsic values influence the pair programming experience, specifically in the levels of satisfaction, compatibility, communication, and confidence. A total of 128 students majoring in Management Information Systems, Information Systems, and Information Technology participated in the experiment. Of the 68 undergraduates, 40 were first-year students and 28 were juniors; the remaining 60 were Masters degree graduate students. The students were formed into a total of 64 pairs based on their personality, level of communication skills, and gender. A total of three visits were made. During the first two visits, a set of four programming problems was used in four programming sessions lasting 45min each; two were individual programming sessions and two were pair programming sessions. At the end of each visit, a questionnaire was administered and collected. The questionnaire results revealed that the various Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) personality combinations did not significantly influence the levels of communication, satisfaction, confidence, and compatibility. The pairs that exhibited a high level of communication between partners did not necessarily experience a high level of satisfaction or exhibit compatibility between partners, nor did they have a high level of confidence regarding the finished product. The communication skill level seemed to have an impact on communication only. Similar to many previous gender-focused literatures, the same gender pairs did exhibit significantly higher levels of communication, satisfaction and compatibility than the mixed gender pairs. Within the same gender pairs, the female-female pairs showed a much higher level than the male-male pairs in those categories. Contrariwise, the same gender pairs did not show a significantly higher confidence level than the mixed gender pairs about their finished product.

Easing Cross-Border Communication: MOBILE-mediated Communication and Its Framework

Communication is probably the most critical component of an organization engaged in a crossborder collaboration. Today’s smart devices substantially contribute to such communication. Combined with social media, mobile communication technologies are becoming the main platform for many core functions within organizations. In this paper, we identified seven media identifiable attributes: synchronicity (SYN), de-individuation and co-presence (DCP), accessibility readiness (ARD), cognizance of environment change (CEC), wearability-portability (WRB) modality-select (MDS) and visibility (VSB). These seven attributes significantly impact the course of mobile-mediated communication. We believe that development of a theoretical perspective that embraces the complexity of mobile-mediated communication is due in order to fully comprehend the mobile ecosystem

Imposing computer-mediated communication theories on virtual reality

Text-based computer-mediated communication such as email, electronic boards, and Internet relay chatting are a large part of our daily lives now. But a next generation interface will eventually replace the current text-based mode. One of the possible next generation interfaces is virtual reality. We evaluate virtual realitys feasibility as a next generation computer-mediated communication system by imposing existing computer-mediated communication system theories.