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Quantitative analysis of communication dynamics in agile software teams through multimodal analytics
Journal
Scientific Reports
Date Issued
2025-03-22
Author(s)
Jaime Godoy
Carlos Escobedo
Cristian Cechinel
Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title>
<jats:p>Effective collaboration in agile software development depends on communication, cooperation, and coordination. While cooperation is often ensured through defined roles and expertise, coordination—how participants interact during collaborative tasks—remains difficult to evaluate objectively. Agile methods promote coordination through techniques like planning poker, yet there is limited empirical evidence of their actual impact on team communication. Multimodal Analytics (MmA), which enables the quantitative analysis of verbal, paraverbal, and non-verbal cues, offers a promising approach to address this gap. This study examines the effect of coordination techniques on team communication using MmA in a controlled experiment. A total of 72 undergraduate students formed 18 teams of four, self-organized to reflect real-life group formation. Each team performed two software effort estimation tasks, one without coordination (ad hoc) and another using planning poker. The study, designed as a controlled experiment, addresses three research questions regarding the impact of coordination on speaking and attention patterns. Audiovisual recordings were analyzed to measure two dependent variables: speaking time and attention time. For each, we calculated three metrics: total time, average time per participant, and standard deviation among participants. Speaking time was measured via speech diarization, while attention time was inferred from participants’ facial orientation during verbal interactions. Results indicate that while planning poker does not significantly alter total speaking or attention time, it fosters a more equitable distribution of speaking time. This suggests an improvement in balanced participation, an important feature of effective collaboration. The study demonstrates MmA’s utility in capturing subtle team dynamics and contributes empirical evidence on the role of coordination techniques in enhancing collaborative communication in agile environments.</jats:p>
<jats:p>Effective collaboration in agile software development depends on communication, cooperation, and coordination. While cooperation is often ensured through defined roles and expertise, coordination—how participants interact during collaborative tasks—remains difficult to evaluate objectively. Agile methods promote coordination through techniques like planning poker, yet there is limited empirical evidence of their actual impact on team communication. Multimodal Analytics (MmA), which enables the quantitative analysis of verbal, paraverbal, and non-verbal cues, offers a promising approach to address this gap. This study examines the effect of coordination techniques on team communication using MmA in a controlled experiment. A total of 72 undergraduate students formed 18 teams of four, self-organized to reflect real-life group formation. Each team performed two software effort estimation tasks, one without coordination (ad hoc) and another using planning poker. The study, designed as a controlled experiment, addresses three research questions regarding the impact of coordination on speaking and attention patterns. Audiovisual recordings were analyzed to measure two dependent variables: speaking time and attention time. For each, we calculated three metrics: total time, average time per participant, and standard deviation among participants. Speaking time was measured via speech diarization, while attention time was inferred from participants’ facial orientation during verbal interactions. Results indicate that while planning poker does not significantly alter total speaking or attention time, it fosters a more equitable distribution of speaking time. This suggests an improvement in balanced participation, an important feature of effective collaboration. The study demonstrates MmA’s utility in capturing subtle team dynamics and contributes empirical evidence on the role of coordination techniques in enhancing collaborative communication in agile environments.</jats:p>