Code Review and Personality: The Impact of MBTI Type

Too often when considering dependable computing, the human equation is not taken into account. In order to build dependable systems, it is necessary to examine all of the aspects of software creation, not least of which are the various people involved in the creation of the software. Large variations in programming ability and performance have been observed [1]. In order to examine some of these variations, a pseudoexperiment following a correlational design was carried out. It was decided to examine just one aspect of software development, in this case code-review. The reasoning for this was that as different tasks within software development require different skills [2], it stands to reason that some people would be better at some of these tasks than others. It is also much easier to control for extraneous variables in an experimental situation when measuring a subsection of programming as compared to attempting to measure the rather amorphous notion of ‘programming ability’ as a whole. For example, the overall quality of a piece of code will not only depend on the code-review ability of the programmer, but also on their design skills, coding ability etc. An individual could design an excellent program, which when finally produced is of poor quality due to the number of bugs it contains. As there is little research explaining the variations in ability, it was theorized that some measure of personality would shed some light on these differences. The Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) [3] measures four bipolar factors, these being; a person’s tendency towards extroversion or introversion; whether they internalise information through direct observation or by considering the implications and possibilities of the information around them; whether they make decisions based on a logical approach or by attempting to consider the feelings of those around them; and whether they prefer to live their lives in a scheduled and organized way, or whether they prefer to be more spontaneous and adaptable.