  Software development teams have to face stress caused by deadlines, staff
turnover, or individual differences in commitment, expertise, and time zones.
While students are typically taught the theory of software project management,
their exposure to such stress factors is usually limited. However, preparing
students for the stress they will have to endure once they work in project
teams is important for their own sake, as well as for the sake of team
performance in the face of stress. Team performance has been linked to the
diversity of software development teams, but little is known about how
diversity influences the stress experienced in teams. In order to shed light on
this aspect, we provided students with the opportunity to self-experience the
basics of project management in self-organizing teams, and studied the impact
of six diversity dimensions on team performance, coping with stressors, and
positive perceived learning effects. Three controlled experiments at two
universities with a total of 65 participants suggest that the social background
impacts the perceived stressors the most, while age and work experience have
the highest impact on perceived learnings. Most diversity dimensions have a
medium correlation with the quality of work, yet no significant relation to the
team performance. This lays the foundation to improve students' training for
software engineering teamwork based on their diversity-related needs and to
create diversity-sensitive awareness among educators, employers and
researchers.
