A methodology and initial exploration of personality traits of GitHub Developers as expressed in GitHub issues

Abstract

Software engineering as a collaborative task relies on the fact that people work together. This work can be influenced by personalities of the participating developers and because projects can fail because of individual differences it becomes more important to understand the human side of software engineering. This work will look at the question of GitHub issues can be used to study the personality of its authors and which, if any, constraints may apply. Using LIWC a methodology will be developed to facilitate that research with a firm grounding in personality theory and it’s practical usage within the domain of software engineering using the Five Factor Model to construct a personality profile of the type of users on GitHub who open up and comment in issues.