  Context: In seeking to better understand the impact of various human factors
in software development, and how teams' attitudes relate to their performance,
increasing attention is being given to the study of team-related artefacts. In
particular, researchers have conducted numerous studies on a range of team
communication channels to explore links between developers' language use and
the incidence of software bugs in the products they delivered. Comparatively
limited attention has been paid, however, to the full range of software tasks
that are commonly performed during the development and delivery of software
systems, in spite of compelling evidence pointing to the need to understand
teams' attitudes more widely. Objective: We were therefore motivated to study
the relationships between task type and team attitudes, and how attitudes
expressed in teams' communications might be related to their task completion
performance when undertaking a range of activities. Method: Our investigation
involved artefacts from 474 IBM Jazz practitioners assembled in 149 teams
working on around 30,000 software development tasks over a three-year period.
We applied linguistic analysis, standard statistical techniques and directed
content analysis to address our research objective. Results: Our evidence
revealed that teams expressed different attitudes when working on various forms
of software tasks, and they were particularly emotional when working to remedy
defects. That said, teams' expression of attitudes was not found to be a strong
predictor of their task completion performance. Conclusion: Efforts aimed at
reducing bug incidence may positively limit teams' emotional disposition when
resolving bugs, thereby reducing the otherwise high demand for emotionally
stable members. (Abridged)
