Software engineering ethics in group practices

2011-07-31Team processes are the core of Software Engineering projects, and sometimes, in order to deliver a project on time and on budget, we tend to overlook how important ethics within the group is. The Software Engineering Code of Ethics chalked by the ACM/IEEE, provides a benchmark for expected ethical behavior by Software Engineers. However, we do not know how the code of ethics manifests itself in a group environment. This paper studies how ethics in a group system is influenced by various factors. These factors include: how ethical the leader in the team is, the type of software development process followed (Agile vs. Incremental) and the team size. The paper also studies the extent to which various aspects of the Software Engineering Code of Ethics drive ethical behavior amongst individuals in a team. The results of this study are based on a survey conducted amongst 76 students in University of Southern California who have done projects in Software Engineering through courses provided by the university: CS577A (Software Engineering I) and Directed Research in Software Engineering. This survey allowed members of a team to give each of their team members an ""ethical score"" based on the Software Engineering code of ethics. Based on these scores, each team had its own ethical score. The trends explained in this paper are based on the scores calculated through these surveys