Nowadays, software is developed in teams. But how should teams be put together in order to build a high quality team?

This study shows how the different roles in a software development team - project leader, requirements engineer, architect/designer, and developer/tester/maintainer - should be staffed with respect to HEXACO personality traits in order to form a high quality team.

We conducted a qualitative analysis by leading 12 semi-structured interviews with interviewees who work in the software engineering sector and have working experience of at least 2 years. We followed a Grounded Theory approach to derive personality traits and link them to software engineering roles.

Our study shows that different personality profiles are indeed beneficial for the different roles. A project leader e.g. should have a more pronounced Agreeableness domain whereas the Extraversion domain should be pronounced with a requirements engineer.

Our results should support the composition of software engineering teams with the aim to successfully build high quality teams.