=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2256/SWEPHD18_paper_03
|storemode=property
|title=The Need for Soft Skills for Ph.D.s in Software Engineering
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2256/SWEPHD18_paper_03.pdf
|volume=Vol-2256
|authors=Sergey Voitenko,Lydmila Gadasina,Lene Sørensen
}}
==The Need for Soft Skills for Ph.D.s in Software Engineering==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2256/SWEPHD18_paper_03.pdf
The Need for Soft Skills for Ph.D.’s in Software Engineering∗
Sergey Voitenko† Lydmila Gadasina Lene Sørensen
Information Systems in Information Systems in Electronic Systems, CMI
Economics Department Economics Department Aalborg University Copenhagen
Saint-Petersburg State University Saint-Petersburg State University Copenhagen S, Denmark
St. Petersburg, Russia St. Petersburg, Russia ls@cmi.aau.dk
s.voitenko@spbu.ru l.gadasina@spbu.ru
ABSTRACT et al., 2003). As GSWE is a relatively new model of software de-
velopment, most of practice software engineers usually do not
Ph.D. students within the area of Software Engineering often have the required experience of working in global teams, hence
work in very confined and focused subareas. However, studies they usually face a large number of problems in GSWE arrange-
show that if the Ph.D. student aims at working in industry later ments some very similar to the challenges seen in outsourcing of
on, the need for the so-called soft skills is high. This paper con- projects (Smite et al., 2010).
cludes on two surveys made to understand whether Ph.D. stu-
dents within the ‘Erasmus +’ project Joint Programs and Frame- GSWE is not still specifically taught in University degree Software
work for Doctoral Education in Software Engineering perceived Engineering, so firms are forced to train SWE professionals di-
the soft skills to be of importance for them to learn. The conclu- rectly in GSWE work environment. Therefore, it has become im-
sions are that the students are aware of the soft skills but often do portant for academic degree programs to train their Software En-
not consider it to be of importance to formally train these. gineering graduates for working in GSWE settings. Due to the in-
creasing popularity and reported challenges of GSWE, some aca-
CCS CONCEPTS demic institutes have started to offer GSWE courses, the level of
which can vary widely, depending on the target audience and the
•Software and its engineering •Software creation and manage- level of course complexity (Fortaleza, et al., 2012). Most of such
ment •Collaboration in software development •Programming courses incorporate project-based work (Doboli, et al., 2009) and
teams soft skills training, such as cultural sensitivity and working in a
team (Monasor, et al., 2010; Richardson, et al., 2009).
KEYWORDS The purpose of this paper is to conclude on what expectations and
Global Software Engineering, Ph.D. Training, Soft Skills views Ph.D. students in SWE area have to the soft skills they need
to acquire to enter the demands initiatives such as GSWE. This is
ACM Reference format: done through a case study of a project in which international
Sergey Voitenko, Lydmilla Gadasina and Lene. 2018. The Need for Soft group of Ph.D. students have classes in traditional Software Engi-
Skills in Software Engineering. In Proceedings of the 2018 Workshop on PhD neering areas but also in methods for obtaining soft skills, follow-
Software Engineering Education: Challenges, Trends, and Programs ing earlier reported surveys (Gadasina et al., 2016; 2017).
(SWEPHD2018). St. Petersburg, Russia, 6 pages.
The case study was related to the ‘Erasmus +’ project Joint Pro-
grams and Framework for Doctoral Education in Software Engi-
neering, PWs@PhD (Knutas at al., 2017), that has the purpose to
1 Introduction develop guidelines for target countries such as Russia and Jordan
Over the past decades, software development with distributed with respect to setting up programs for Ph.D.s in Software Engi-
teams across a region, country, or around the globe has become neering. The project works through production of content and
an established pattern named Global Software Engineering material on 7 areas of knowledge related to the SWEBOK (Bour-
(GSWE) (Hawthorne and Perry, 2003; Monasor, et al., 2010). With que et al., 2014) and it defines a set of courses to potentially in-
some benefits such as reduced time and cost of development due clude in a Ph. D. program. As part of these courses, soft skills are
to “follow the sun” strategy, GSWE also presents several types of taught by use of Problem Based Learning method (Askehave et al.,
challenges associated with geographical, temporal, and socio-cul- 2015). With 11 universities partners distributed over 6 countries,
tural distances (Hoda et al., 2017; Ågerfalk et al., 2005; Lanubile, the PWs@PhD has held 7 intense courses in areas such as for ex-
ample math and computing, human computer interactions, engi-
Copyright © 2018 for the individual papers by the papers' authors. Copying neering methods and tools, business perspectives and Problem
permitted for private and academic purposes. This volume is published and Based Learning1.
copyrighted by its editors.
The 2018 Workshop on PhD Software Engineering Education: Challenges, Trends, and The intense schools were organised through two weeks of train-
Programs, September 17th, 2018, St. Petersburg, Russia
ing in one field with Ph.D. students from the partner countries
1 fase.it.lut.fi
PHDSWE’18, Sept 2018, St. Petersburg, Russia S. Voitenko et al.
(Russia, Jordan, Finland, UK, Germany, Denmark) and Ph.D. stu- and the trees, knowledgeable about people and the organization,
dents could participate in one or several of the schools dependent update mental models, handling complexity); Engagement with
on their interest and availability. The schools have been running Teammates (creating shared context, creating shared success, cre-
over the three years from 2015 to 2018. The peculiarity of this ating a safe haven, honest); Software Product (elegant, creative,
group of Software Engineering students is a high level of training anticipating needs).
in the specialty, i.e. in the field of hard skills. This is usually the
result of individual long-term work in basic university with the Russian universities have thoroughly elaborated methods of
scientific adviser in a narrow field of research and development. teaching hard skills, created State Educational Standards and ed-
This means that a number of the students lack soft skills which ucational programs in their specialties (Terekhov, 2001; Taran et
are demanded in industry and through international cooperation. al., 2007; Khalin et al., 2017). Methods of mastering soft skills at
The paper has the following sections. In section 2, the concept of different educational levels have appeared for a long time; how-
soft skills is described in more detail as a background. Section 3 ever, in the universities of Russia they have not yet received sys-
describes the methodology of the paper. Section 4 includes a de- tem development. The most effective of them, in our opinion, are
scription of the survey carried out and the analysis made of the various types of project and problem-based learning (PBL) that are
results. In section 5, the conclusions are presented. actively used in Western European universities, including in-
verted class and peer-to-peer technologies (for example, French
École 42 and Danish Aalborg University).
2 Soft Skills for Software Engineering
For a software developer in Microsoft, a number of soft skills are PBL is a learner-centred pedagogical methodology in which stu-
required (Orsted, 2000). Amongst others Orsted (2000) points to dents are assessed on their ability to go through a problem-solving
skills in change-management, stress management, problem solv- process usually based on real-life situations (Askehave et al, 2015).
ing skills, self-development, communication and interpersonal Several authors (Capraro, 2013; Freemen, 2014) confirmed in their
skills. Also, in Sedelmaier et al (2014) it is stated that “soft skills studies the benefits of PBL for STEM students such as: considera-
are equally important” for a software developer to accomplish the ble improvements in critical, lateral and creative thinking, prob-
needs of modern teamwork and communication with stakehold- lem solving strategies intrinsic motivation, entrepreneurship,
ers. Generally, soft skills are seen as the complementarity of tech- group collaboration communication skills, and collaboration with
nical skills when referring to software engineering (Ahmed et al, society.
2012). This includes personality traits, attitudes that drive the per-
sons’ behaviour and competences in interacting with peers in
teamwork.
3 Methodology
Very little research has been carried out to understand the views
The traditional worldwide view of the set of competencies re- of the students themselves about the skills they need acquire for
quired for software engineers assumes the mandatory study of future work, and almost none asked opinions of Ph.D. level stu-
technical, or hard skills as the baseline. In the most general case, dents specialized in Software Engineering. This paper extends and
these are STEM subjects and programming. It is known that in is based on earlier works by Gadasina et al (2016, 2017) reporting
countries seeking to dominate the field of information technology on surveys made with a group of 31 high level Ph.D. students who
but lacking qualified personnel in high-tech areas such as China, are currently engaged in the doctoral programs in Software Engi-
STEM education has recently become more popular (Wolfe, 2018). neering at the international PWs@PhD Project. In both surveys,
However, it turns out that these competencies are not enough at the students were asked about their views towards acquiring soft
higher levels of software development management (Wheadon & skills as part of their future work competence. In Gadasina et al.
Duval-Couetil, 2014). The research Project Oxygen conducted by (2016) processing and statistical analysis results of the written sur-
Google in 2013 (Strauss, 2017) showed that among the eight most vey allowed identifying groups of the most significant for stu-
important qualities of the best Google managers seven are soft dent’s professional skills for future work; to find out the Ph.D. stu-
skills, and all the competencies of the STEM group are in the last dents level of knowledge and mastering these skills; to evaluate
eighth place. In 2017 another study by Google (Project Aristotle, the student’s intention to obtain them.
Strauss, 2017) showed that the best teams in high-tech environ-
ments demonstrate many Soft Skills, among which emotional At the very beginning of the 21st century three largest software
safety dominates. and hardware companies Microsoft, Cisco and Intel set up an ‘XXI
Century Skills’ Project2 to develop a new educational system be-
A systematic approach to the study of this phenomenon was ap- cause they were concerned that universities were not producing
plied in the study of the University of Washington (Li et al., 2015). graduates that could fit best into the digital work places and the
In this study, 59 leading executives and developers from 13 de- new manufacturing system. In a short time, researchers of educa-
partments of Microsoft identified a variety set of 53 characteris- tion from all over the world define what was meant by XXI cen-
tics, which definitely should be attributed to soft skills. At a high tury complex skills, such as a collaborative problem solving
four levels they are following: Personal Characteristics (improv- (Kozma and Voogt, 2003; Trilling and Fadel, 2009). The ‘XXI
ing, passionate, open-minded); Decision Making (sees the forest
2 http://atc21s.org
The Need for Soft Skills for PhD’s in Software Engineering PHDSWE’18, Sept 2018, St. Petersburg, Russia
Century Skills’ framework postulates that as the share of manual the ranked sets of skills mentioned by students and required by
and routine cognitive labour is declining, and of no routine cog- employers in the area of ‘Research, Planning and Analysis’ is
nitive labour increases now, education process should be re- equal to 0,41 (Gadasina et al. 2016). This result show that, despite
formed to provide students with skills more appropriate in the that complete lists of skills required by employers and desired by
new economy. Right now, the project is at the stage of being able students differ considerably, Ph.D.-students quite well understand
to define a template that allows those sets of skills to work. That's the basic soft skill sets necessary to engage in higher positions
why in the second stage of the study (Gadasina and Voitenko corresponding to level of their qualification. See details in Appen-
2017) the 4 groups of skills from the ‘XXI Century Skills’Project dix A.
were selected as basic soft skills and were explored the importance
In the second survey described in more detail in (Gadasina and
of owning them the same international group of 31 Ph.D. students
Voitenko 2017), a somewhat different approach was gained. For
who received Software Engineering training in the PWs@PhD
every 4 group of XXI Century Skills the difference between the
Project..
scores of the answers to the question (2) and to the question (1)
These four groups of XXI Century Skills are: Ways of Thinking (ef- (i.e. ‘What skills I would like to train?’ mines ‘What skills I really
fectively reasoning, critical and systems thinking, judgement and mastered in my University?’) was calculated.
decision making, problem solving, creativity, innovations imple-
The results were subjected to statistical and cluster analysis. Clus-
menting, learning to learn); Ways of Working (communication,
ter analysis was carried out by the modified method of Ward with
collaboration, teamwork); Tools for Working (media-, information-
Manhattan distance for each of these two questions. Two clusters
and ICT-literacies); Ways of Living in the World (flexibility and
were discovered to be statistically significant for all four groups
adaptability, initiative and self-direction, productivity and ac-
of XXI Century Skills. These clusters can be conditionally called
countability, leadership and responsibility, social and cross-cul-
‘acting students’ and ‘dormant students’.
tural skills). First two groups of XXI Century Skills compose
Learning and Innovation skills. Presence of these skills separates Statistical analysis showed, that maximum value of residuals
those students who are prepared for increasingly complex life and (+0,89) in the first Ways of Thinking group is for Implement Inno-
work environments in modern fast changing world. The descrip- vations skills, with that such kind of skills is absent in the list of
tions of the skills according universal list from the website of the skills elaborated by this group members themselves. It may mean
Partnership for the skills of the 21st century3 were incorporated students do not see innovations in pedagogical process at their
into the text of the questionnaire at the request of the respond- universities, and it could be supposed that attention to Implement
ents. In survey the students were asked two key questions for Innovations skills are absent in University courses. However, it
every skill from the all 4 groups: does not mean that they are on big demand on the labour market
for Software Engineering positions.
(1) Please rate your overall level of mastery that you have
achieved during training at the university in the skills below; A high need for mastering Creativity and Decisions Making skills
(+0,64 & +0,43) is expected. The traditional educational process in
(2) Please rate how likely it is that you take part in training the
the academic style pays little attention to the development of
skills below, if it were available to you as part of your high school
these skills, which are obviously in demand among employers. On
program of education.
the contrary, respondents believe that they are in good standing
during their studies at the university in Learning to Learn (–0,29),
4 Results Critical Thinking (–0,11) and, to a lesser extent, Problem Solving
(+0,21) skills. This, apparently, is due to the fact that for Software
As mentioned, two surveys have been carried out to understand Engineering specialty this soft skills are more related to technical
the students’ perception of their needs in soft skills. In the study hard skills whose mastering is somehow included in the curricu-
by Gadasina et al. (2016) the list of skills named and ranked by lum.
students was compared with a list of skills required by employers
in the areas close to the Software Engineering. According to the To avoid loading the text by clustered dendrograms and diagrams
Burning Glass Technologies report, in ‘Project Management, Re- cluster analysis results presented below in 4 summary tables for
search and Strategy Cluster’ of required skills “research, project the four XXI Century skills groups. Each table summarizes the re-
management, negotiation and analytic skills are in particular de- sults of processing responses in the form of an estimate of the per-
mand among high-skill, high paying jobs in families such as man- centage size of the following 4 groups of students who believe:
agement and research. These jobs have experienced wage growth
o that they have the skills and intend to master them,
and expanded employment opportunities in recent years.” (Burn-
o that they have the skills and don’t intend to master them,
ing Glass Technologies, 2015).
o that they don’t have the skills but intend to master them,
The skills of this cluster, such as managing project, research meth- o that they don’t have the skills and don’t intend to master.
ods and negotiation, have the highest evaluation scores in stu-
For the 1st group of skills Ways of Thinking, summary table is:
dents list of desired skills as well. In general, correlation between
3 http://www.p21.org
PHDSWE’18, Sept 2018, St. Petersburg, Russia S. Voitenko et al.
Have skills Don’t have skills Intent to master 45% 19%
Intent to master 57% 32% Don’t intent to master 13% 23%
Don’t intent to master 04% 07%
It should be noted that despite of Software Engineering specialty
The intent of the most of respondents to master and develop this about half of the respondents consider that they do not possess
group of skills even if they already have it, means that the Ways these crucial literacies.
of Thinking group of skills is highly important for Software Engi-
The forth group of skills Ways of Living in the World directed to
neering students.
develop thinking skills, content knowledge, and social and emo-
Second Ways of Working group imply skills to Communicate tional competencies to navigate complex life and work environ-
clearly and to Collaborate with others effectively. Certainly, the ments. This and earlier (Gadasina et al 2016) surveys show that
ability to express clearly own thoughts and ideas for others effec- Leadership (+0.77) and Initiative (+0.58) skills are in demand re-
tively is important for any specialist. Typically, it involves the ex- gardless of age, country and university. Relevance of Social (+0.48)
change of information between people in a face-to-face meeting, and Cross-Cultural (+0.39) skills require introducing in universi-
such as negotiating between developers and business consultants ties collaborating projects and programs for students from differ-
and managers, more often between developers themselves, or dis- ent faculties, universities and countries. Results also show that
cussing problems at a workshop etc. However, in Global SWE pro- study programs in universities allow in big amount develop such
jects such direct communication between developers from differ- skills as Flexibility (–0.35), Accountability (–0.16), Responsibility
ent countries of the world is usually impossible due to their sepa- (–0.10) and Adaptability (–0.03).
ration in space and time, therefore communication is carried out
For the 4th group Ways of Living in the World, the table is:
mainly in written form. Distributed Linux GSWE development is
an excellent example4. Have skills Don’t have skills
Intent to master 49% 03%
Communicating programmers mainly is discussing and review-
Don’t intent to master 16% 32%
ing code, sometimes simply viewing comments on the repository
without explicit conversation, but you necessarily need good Almost a third part of respondents don’t intend to master this type
skills in clear writing and properly understanding e-mails. It fol- of skills despite they don’t have an experience in these skills. We
lows from the answers, that Collaboration (+0,35) and especially can suppose that respondents may believe that these skills are in-
Teamwork (+0,55) have a weak presence in respondents’ training, nate and it is impossible to learn them. Again, the most of re-
in less degree it concerns Communication (+0,29) skills. Again, spondents who believe to have such skills are intent to develop
traditional classical training programs at universities do not con- them and vice versa.
tribute to the development of the skills of this group, while PhD-
Here it is appropriate to provide some comments from the side of
students themselves feel the need for their development. This
experienced specialists: Leadership can be a factor preventing get-
should be noted, as these skills are in high demand.
ting an ordinary job position in some companies; Social and
For the 2nd Ways of Working group of skills the table looks so: Cross-Cultural skills can be obtained and improved on a job place
as most developers usually share common professional set of
Have skills Don’t have skills
skills; Self Direction for sure is one of the key skills, and Produc-
Intent to master 68% 13%
tivity is one of the key skills for assessment by management.
Don’t intent to master 00% 19%
Mastery of 21st Century themes and Core subjects (English, world
All respondents who believe, that they have Communication and
languages, arts, mathematics, economics, science, geography, his-
Collaboration skills intent to enhance them. As for the previous
tory, government and civics) is essential for all students in the 21st
group of skills, it means that they understand the importance of
century. In addition to these Core subjects, schools and universi-
continually improving skills significant for them.
ties should move to promote the mastery of academic content at
The next third group Tools for Working contains Information, Me- much higher levels by integrating the Interdisciplinary themes of
dia and ICT literacies. Media literacy (+10) shows students had not the 21st century into the core subjects. The interest of the re-
mastered it at universities. ICT literacy (–0.03) and Information spondents to the skills of this Interdisciplinary group can be the
literacy (–0.13) are evidently the important skills for SWE speci- sign not of the lack of studying these themes in the universities
alities so in Universities they are learned more. That’s why the but of the importance of the skills in general. For the professionals
students consider them to be known enough and is not interested within the area of Software Engineering following Literacies are
in further learning. This makes sense in the case when these sub- very important: Health (+1.10), Entrepreneurial (+0.94), Environ-
jects could be learned and extended by himself. mental (+0.90), Financial (+0.68), Civic (+0.61) and Business (+48).
The table for the 3rd group of skills Tools for Working: As a result of the research conducted within the framework of the
PWs@PhD Project, it has been experimentally established that in
Have skills Don’t have skills
addition to mastering the hard (technical) skills, it is necessary to
4 https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v4.15/process/2.Process.html
The Need for Soft Skills for PhD’s in Software Engineering PHDSWE’18, Sept 2018, St. Petersburg, Russia
pay attention to the development of the soft skills in order to in- The results of the study also have significant value for curriculum
crease the competitiveness of graduates. Carried out studies have choices, teaching methods, and learning objectives in traditional
shown that Software Engineering PhD-students understand the Software Engineering educational process. First of all, university
need to master the soft skills competencies as personal qualities educators’ staff may consider adding courses on new topics not
that enable them to interact effectively and harmoniously during found in their current curricula. For example, it is generally rec-
training process and on the working place, and they are ready to ognized that decision making is a key part of software engineer-
study them. Students emphasize the following skills as the most ing, but this specific topic is not a part of the ACM’s “Software
important: leadership, interdisciplinary collaboration, communi- Engineering 2014 Curriculum Guidelines for Undergraduate De-
cation, critical thinking, career preparation and planning, entre- gree Programs in Software Engineering”5. Meanwhile special de-
preneurship, responsibility. cision-making courses might be helpful to software engineering
students and postgraduates.
It should be noted, that although soft skills are important for an
IT specialist (software engineer, software developer or R&D), they Software Engineering educators might also use results of
do not have a big value without professional level of hard skills Gadasina et al. (2016, 2017) and cited above investigations to ex-
which are primary and necessary for a high specialist. The set of amine usually used teaching methods. Most key software engi-
soft skills plays important but supplementing role. neer soft skills, such as communicative and creative skills, focus
on how to do rather than what to do, whereas most teaching in-
structions focus on teaching only cognitive skills and acquire
knowledge. In this direction educators might consider moving
their attention on the processes of how and in what ways software
engineering goals are attained. For example, existing Problem
Based Learning approach and Project Based Courses might use
5 Conclusion skills presented here to help students evaluate each other’s behav-
To develop software for competitive product software engineer iour, as well as train communicative and creative soft skills sim-
must first of all have the required set of hard skills – such as to ultaneously with cognitive hard skills referring to the ultimate
design, write, maintain, and test code, and necessary knowledge goal of the skills – ability of a team to produce a quality software
of Mathematics, Computer Science and related subject. Modern in time and budget. Moreover, educators can consider explicitly
Software Engineering also includes such activities as project man- discussing what students will not be capable to learn in academic
agement, establishing the development process, communicating settings, allowing them to be aware of potential skills and
knowledge gaps and enable them to seek out opportunities out-
with the team and other teams in cross cultural and/or distributed
side of the Universities where they might be better learned
environment. Delivering the code only is insufficient in modern through mentorship on the job, distance MOOCs, internships or
complex contextual technical conditions, the appropriate level of global open-source projects.
soft skills is also necessary for a good software engineer and R&D,
especially for a manager position. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The above results of our current field of study of the PWs@PhD The authors of the paper high appreciate the efforts made by stu-
Project international group of highly qualified in hard skills soft- dents during the PWs@PhD intense schools. The work is made as
ware engineers show that Ph.D. students understand the need to part of the PWs@PhD project.
master soft skills and are ready to learn them in university.
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