Does MBTI assessment help development teams?

Question

I was just wondering how much (if at all) MBTI type testing helps development teams?

Answer 1

It depends on the temperament of the person you ask. *rimshot*

More seriously, I think that just like any number of other team-building tools, its effectiveness is primarily determined by how willing the team members are to make use of it on their own; if it's seen as a pointless directive from above it will be a waste of time and money.

I believe it may also have some use in diagnosing communication difficulties between specific individuals. My own temperament type is very unusual for a software engineer, so I often need to expend considerable time and energy trying to communicate to others what appears screamingly obvious to me.

Answer 2

The MBTI has one surprising benefit: It's often the first time some developers are confronted with the notion that not everyone thinks the same way that they do. That realization can reduce "flipping the bozo bit" behavior based on developers having trouble communicating with one another.

Answer 3

Dave really gets the point here - it's not so much that you're ESTJ and I'm INFP or whatever. It's that my life experiences make it such that I process information differently than you, and I have my own motivations which may be different than yours, etc.

There are not a large percentage of people in our field (or IT in general) who grasp this concept. I think the ones that learn to realize this and are better able to put themselves in someone else's shoes (especially those all important people: the boss and the user), are going be more successful in their careers and in life.

Unfortunately, a lot of organizations (including one I used to work for) took the MBTI too far - it became a way of stereotyping people, e.g. "You're ABCD personality type, so you are like this." Well, that's not really accurate. Sometimes I rhyme slow, sometimes I rhyme quick, to quote a famous hip-hop track.

The MBTI is a gross over-simplification of a human being, but it has its uses. If you use it for what it's good for (learning some different general perspectives that people have), but don't take it too far (using it as a substitute for your own intuition), it's a useful tool.