Practicing Equity Diversity Inclusion (EDI) in Software Development Teams: A Systematic Literature Survey

Abstract

Human factors in successful software projects have always been a critical element in software engineering, however, it has always been overshadowed by focusing more on technology and underlying processes. This work is inspired by the recent increasing interest from the software engineering research community in human factors and software development by leveraging and understanding some examples of human factors such as Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) which were not given due research consideration earlier. We performed a systematic literature review (SLR) to review the state-of-the-art literature on practicing EDI in software development teams despite of country or culture. We found that evidence of comprehensive research about practicing EDI in software development teams is limited, the up-to-date majority focus is on the topic of diversity, whereas research on topics of practicing equity and inclusion in software development teams is sporadic. It is expected that investigating the impact of human factors in the context of EDI’s triangle will generate new knowledge. This will allow software practitioners to understand the benefits of practicing EDI in managing software development teams as well as provide opportunities to incorporate them into the core development process activities. In the end, future research directions for EDI practices in software development teams are also identified.

Keywords

• Equity
• diversity
• inclusion
• software development team
• software engineering
• software process