Towards an Understanding of Team Dynamics in Very Small Enterprises

Abstract

Given that it is relatively noncontroversial to claim that human capital, both in terms of education and experience, is associated with superior firm performance, this can be extended to say that having the requisite human capital in terms of software development staff is highly important for software development project success. However, translating into actual corporate benefits implies an understanding of the range of human capital issues in organizations. The present study examines one such range of issues with a focus on the dynamics of teams, where team dynamics is taken as a general term to denote the nature, quality and quantity of interactions among a firms human capital at the team level. Specifically we refer to collaborative dynamics among human capital team resources to indicate the extent to which valuable information is shared, levels of engagement, the existence of a collective sense of awareness and the ability to learn from one another. The results of a study of a series of very small software development firms are presented to ground this study in industrial practice.