Two Heads Are Better Than One: Temple Computer Research Supports Value of Teamwork

TWO HEADS ARE BETTER THAN ONE: TEMPLE COMPUTER RESEARCH SUPPORTS VALUE OF TEAMWORK

For more information, contact Rob Goldberg, Temple University News Bureau, 215-204-7476

The picture of a pocket-protector-equipped computer nerd toiling quietly in a cubicle may someday become obsolete, according to research conducted by Temple University computer and information sciences professor John T. Nosek.

ìTeam programming has usually meant coordinating the efforts of solitary programmers who each work alone on their small piece of a large programming puzzle,î says Nosek. ìWe set out to see if it would work better for programmers to team up and work together on the same task.î

The experiment pitted two groups of professional programmers against each other in a 45-minute test, asking them to write a program for a stock trading firm that makes extensive use of computers. In the control group, the programmers worked alone while programmers in the experimental group were encouraged to work together in pairs and to speak to one another.

ìThe collaborating programmers worked more quickly, produced better programs, and even reported enjoying the task more than the control group,î says Nosek. ìNow someone might well point out that if two programmers are doing the work of one person, they would have to be twice as fast to equal the work output of one person. But you have to remember that often the first company out with a new product wins, so the paired programmers donít necessarily have to be twice as fast as the solo programmers to give their employer a competitive edge. They just have to beat the competition to market and produce a good product.î

Nosek built upon prior work in which student programmers completed timed tests. In the current experiment, Nosek used 15 professional programmers producing actual work: five teams of two programmers compared to five programmers working alone. Their task was to write a program to analyze a database, then write errors to a file, and to report certain errors to system administrators. ìIn fact, one of the programs written by the experimental group amazed their manager. The program outperformed even those written by specialized outside consultants, and also saved costly computer time by running more quickly,î says Nosek.

Nosekís work will be published in Communications of the Association of Computing Machinery , the main journal serving 65,000 practitioners and academics in the information technology field.

*** rg-986 June 3, 1997