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.

翻译：软件开发团队必须面对由截止日期、人员流动以及成员在承诺、专业知识和时区上的个体差异所带来的压力。尽管学生通常能学到软件项目管理的理论知识，但他们接触此类压力因素的机会通常有限。然而，让学生为将来在项目团队中工作所必须承受的压力做好准备，无论对他们自身而言，还是对团队在压力下的表现而言，都至关重要。团队表现与软件开发团队的多样性有关，但关于多样性如何影响团队内部所经历的压力，目前知之甚少。为了阐明这一点，我们为学生提供了在自组织团队中亲身体验项目管理基础的机会，并研究了六个多样性维度对团队表现、应对压力源以及感知到的积极学习效果的影响。在两所大学进行的三项对照实验（共65名参与者）表明，社会背景对感知压力源的影响最大，而年龄和工作经验对感知学习效果的影响最大。大多数多样性维度与工作质量呈中等相关性，但与团队表现无显著关系。这为根据学生多样性的相关需求改进软件工程团队协作培训，并在教育工作者、雇主和研究人员中建立多样性敏感意识奠定了基础。