Instrument to measure the perceptions of software development communities regarding communication, coordination and cooperation: Result of validation through expert judgment

Introduction: Software development is a sociotechnical activity that requires both social and technical factors to achieve any proposed objective. These factors characterize Sociotechnical Congruence (STC), which focuses on the proper use of soft skills such as coordination, communication, and cooperation within software development teams. Objective: The objective of this study is to introduce a measurement tool that enables the assessment of perceptions among members of a software development community, based on 42 questions formulated across three dimensions: communication, cooperation, and coordination. Method: The validation of the measurement instrument was carried out through expert judgment. Nine professionals were selected to evaluate the instrument using four quality criteria: sufficiency, clarity, relevance, and coherence. To determine the agreement among the experts, the Fleiss' Kappa coefficient was employed, and Landis and Koch's criteria were applied to measure the degree of concordance. Results: The agreement strength for each dimension was substantial and nearly perfect. Considerable agreement was identified for the sufficiency, coherence, and clarity quality criteria, with clarity having the highest coefficient (0.85). The relevance quality criterion showed moderate agreement, being the lowest (0.583). A significance level of 5% was considered, with the clarity quality criterion being the most significant, with a p-value of 0.02. Conclusions: Once the adjustments to the instrument are made, it can be used to measure perceptions of the dimensions: communication, cooperation, and coordination within software development communities.