THE ESSENCE OF ETHICAL LEADERSHIP IN SOFTWARE

DEVELOPMENT PROJECT

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 Abstract
Ethical leadership requires ethical leaders who give a strong foundation to carry out values,
visions and mission to amplify collective organisational goals and assist to make positive
impacts on business while performing strategic planning to ensure adequate success. As
prominent leaders capable of engaging moral behaviours convey generous attitudes and creating
a vibrant workplace community, organisations must focus on leadership development practices
to incorporate productivity and creative team management practices. The fundamental purpose
of ethical leaders is to evoke confidence in potential investors and subordinates, build customer
loyalty, establish trust and a healthier workplace environment. This systematic empirical
framework sheds light on the urgency of ethical leadership and key requirements that leaders
must follow to achieve predetermined corporate goals. The study describes leadership theories
including Trait Theory and Transformational Theory to emphasize leadership development
programs for software development projects within mobile technology industry. The paper also
discusses the role of leaders in XP Agile SDLC, and highlights key issues that leaders are facing
within the industry.

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 Table of Contents

Introduction......................................................................................................................................4

Leadership Theories.........................................................................................................................4

Trait Theory.................................................................................................................................4

Transformational Leadership Theory..........................................................................................5

Analysis...........................................................................................................................................7

Synthesis of Key Leadership Issues................................................................................................8

Poorly Maintained Communication.............................................................................................8

Lack of Ethics and Accountability..............................................................................................9

Peer Pressure and Fear of Employment.......................................................................................9

Lack of Alignment.......................................................................................................................9

Unavailability of Clear Vision.....................................................................................................9

Insufficient Organizational Culture...........................................................................................10

Poor Execution and Team Structure..........................................................................................10

Agile Methodology in Mobile Technology...................................................................................10

Discussions....................................................................................................................................13

Conclusion and Critical Evaluation...............................................................................................13

Appraisal........................................................................................................................................14

Reflection.......................................................................................................................................14

References......................................................................................................................................16

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Introduction

In the twenty-first century, mobile technology has become an integral property of modernized
contemporary society as advanced computing capabilities and high-tech connectivity have
brought revolutionary features in globalised economies and communication. As SDLC
encompasses a core software development team with distinct areas of expertise, workstyle and
unique ecosystem, the urgency of ethical leadership has become more prominent to thrive
creativity and innovation while selecting appropriate team structure, budgetary concerns and
availability of adequate resources. As technology evolves rapidly, the presence of ethical and
professional leaders is significant to maximize team performance, organisation-wide culture and
efficiency, leaders must correlate with behavioural traits including charismatic personality,
intelligence, openness and transparency to foster a positive work environment and greater
innovation. Agile methodology is an effective SDLC model that emphasizes a fact-driven and
systematic approach to implement brainstorming ideas into consideration, and assist managers to
enhance team communication and collaboration. This systematic empirical framework describes
the notion and importance of ethical leadership skills in SDLC and confines valuable leadership
theories including Trait Theory and Transformational theory to understand leadership skills,
behavioural patterns and excellency of engaged leaders. The study also discusses concurrent
issues and misinterpretations of leadership issues, and its implications on software team
management.

Leadership Theories

Trait Theory

The Trait Theory refers to an effective leadership theory that extensively focuses on the
individuals' mindset, behavioural patterns and characteristics to compare and contrast
accountabilities and effectiveness of individual leadership skills and assist to predict individual
capabilities to empathize organizational strategies and techniques. Trait theory mainly attempts
to identify physiological, demographic, interactive and social characteristics of the leader and
facilitates to evaluate effectiveness, individualistic mindset and team management capabilities.

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As the presence of ethical leaders influences team members to feel comfortable and confident to
emphasize collaboration and gain management support to execute predetermined objectives, the
leaders must be required to improve individual's interests, interdisciplinary attributes and
expertise abilities to uplift team's success and growth. Trait theory extensively provides a distinct
overview of ethical leaders and mentioned significant traits including achievement drive, self-
confidence, honesty and integrity, knowledge of software, emotional intelligence and cognitive
abilities which are essential for leaders to practise effective SDLC models (Wyatt and Silvester,
2018) The theory suggests achievement drive leadership skills assist to consider standardise
decision-making abilities, and motives leaders to put high-value efforts. It also facilitates
managers to uphold high ambition, intense desire and willingness to deliver projects within
budget and time frames while maintaining reliability and professional relationships. The
cognitive ability of leaders allows amplifying trustworthiness and individual capabilities to
exercise good judgement, conceptual designs and strong analytical skills while using relevant
industry knowledge and personal interpretations. Emotional intelligence and maturity facilitates
leaders to become more involved and allows developing proactive measures to minimise
occupational threats including conflicts, work-life balance and accountability (Aslam, 2018).
Distinct qualities including individual charisma, persistence and determination help managers to
execute complex tasks, communication and interpersonal skills while motivating and inspiring
subordinates. Effective implementation of trait theory can enhance leadership qualities and
indicates preconditions that leaders must comply with. It is a widely known theory that provides
constructive feedback and information regarding leadership skills and experience.

Transformational Leadership Theory

Transformational leadership theory refers to a systematic empirical leadership theory that

describes the symbolic qualities of prominent leaders who are highly capable to motivate and
inspire team creativity and imagination capabilities to create a vibrant and dynamic workforce.
The core competency of transformational leadership theory significantly lies on the individual
capabilities of leaders who adequately prepared to implement techno-centric visionaries and
team engagement principles to execute distinct tasks with system-control mechanisms and
ethical standards. As suggested by Berkovich, (2016), prime qualities of prominent leaders
include fact-driven visionaries, daring capabilities and risk-taking abilities, and adequately

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capable to handle conflicts and disagreements between team members while considering
organizational norms and sustainability-consciousness attributes. These kinds of leaders uphold
charismatic personality and high-value appeals that significantly amplifies collaborative efforts
and improves performance. Transformational leadership theory comprises four distinct factors
including inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, idealistic influences and
individualized considerations. Systematic representation of such characteristics allows leaders to
control, manage and influence project members, and inspire creativity and innovation-seeking
mindsets (Kiersch and Peters, 2017). The success of transformational leadership is the promotion
of proactive visions and set of standard values to the team to ensure productivity and efficiency
while uplifting personal and professional development opportunities a d providing an efficient
sense of meaning. Intellectual stimulation characteristics facilities manage to encourage and
support individuals' to improve creativity and imagination capabilities as they nurture
brainstorming ideas and enthusiastic perspectives. These characters make leaders great, and
follow a distinctive style to incorporate effective collaboration (Rocque et al. 2016). Idealised
influence is also necessary for software development projects as they uphold high standards of
ethical conduct to work as a whole, and gain respect and admiration by their efforts. In
individualized considerations, leaders work as a mentor by distributing knowledge and
experience based on individuals' capabilities and performance. Such characteristics assist to
improve decisions and uses impression management to gain premeditated milestones.

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 Figure 1: Transformational Leadership Theory
(Source: Berkovich, 2016)

Analysis

The essence of the directive, task-oriented and accurate leadership is gradually becoming more
significant for software development projects as it allows providing efficient mentoring and
coaching programs based on logical and analytical skills while considering four distinct factors;
people, product, technology and process. Leadership is a continuous improvement journey of
learning, teaching and growing which describes the notion of modernity and implementation of
proactive leadership theories to enhance leadership skills and experience while translating good
leadership practices. Various conventional and functional roles of the leader including timely
delivery of products, translation of complex engineering design, infrastructure development and
team management require to manage with high-end specifications and customised employee
engagement policies to reduce complexity and vulnerability (Rosenbach, 2018). As leaders pay a
fundamental role to seamlessly executive project tasks, managers need to enhance individual
qualities and decision-making abilities to satisfy generic employee satisfaction attributes by
undertaking concurrent changes including open-door communication channels, performance-
based reward schemes and continuous improvement plans. The mobile technology projects are
highly complex and sophisticated, ethical leadership skills will influence various distinct team
members including developers, architects, engineers and designers to implement creative
thinking and comprehensive brainstorming ideas. Based on Trait Theory, the addition of certain
behavioural traits and characteristics including self-confidence, sociability, cooperativeness and
personality differences can be significant for software project managers to improve personal and
professional skills as these traits are inevitable to distribute knowledge and expertise solutions
for team members. These traits also engage multiple techno-centric visionaries including the
necessity of ICT based training programs and integrated information systems to streamline
development processes by using distinct data visualization tools and techniques. Systematic
implementation of Trait Theory can assist organisations to incorporate constructive leadership
development programs to promote ethical leaders (Zaccaro et al. 2018). Mobile industry also can
use DiSC is a behaviour assessment tool to provide equal opportunity for employees to become

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prominent leaders. Based on the Trait Theory, allocation of mentor, leadership development
programs and annual events to emphasize leadership development initiatives.
The current mobile industry characterised by multiple uncertainties, global turbulence and
organisational instabilities which influence MNCs to focus on leadership development programs
under the provision of transformational leadership theory. The presence of transformational
leaders significantly demonstrates high job satisfaction and organisation-wide commitment for
subordinates and assist to improve organisation-wide culture by motivating and inspiring.
Implementation of transformational leadership theory can facilitate the Industry to develop the
multigenerational and devoted workforce and can create ample opportunities to conduct seamless
software development projects by maintaining corporate governance principles, employee
engagement policies and regulatory compliances.

Synthesis of Key Leadership Issues

Mobile technology is the foundation of modernized contemporary society as it allows improving

communication infrastructure and equipment legitimately by practising creative entrepreneurial
skills and leadership components. In software development projects, potential leaders are
assigned to articulate a potential, realistic and attractive vision to create an engineered direction
towards proficiency and profitability by leveraging techno-centric visionaries and management
practices. However, lack of expertise solutions, inappropriate content creation, unavailability of
industry-specific practices, leadership skills and experience can hinder project deliverables as
these factors are completely responsible to create competitiveness miscommunication due to
misinformation, ignorance and deceptive involvements (Iden and Bygstad, 2018). The study has
identified various comprehensive issues that leaders can face in software development projects
are enlisted below.

Poorly Maintained Communication

Unavailability of streamlined and multilayer communication channels can create comprehensive

limitations for leaders to develop fact-driven visions and assist the team to persuade that
visionary. Lack of appropriate communication and open-door mechanisms set high barriers to
increase transparency and maintain commitment (Akgün, 2020). Due to unusual pressure, lack
of emotional intelligence and interdisciplinary activities, leaders care to struggle to maintain
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discipline and consistency and enable to engage multilayer stakeholders within software
development projects.

Lack of Ethics and Accountability

Nowadays leaders are incapable to maintain concurrent focus on long-term relationships, and
inadequacy in maintaining accountability creating comprehensive challenges to gain an
appreciation for collaboration with teams. Various distinct threats, including workplace
discrimination, lack of self-controlled disciplinary actions, inequalities in rewarding schemes and
favouritism are also affecting employee satisfaction attributes and hence performance.

Peer Pressure and Fear of Employment

Market competitiveness, changing consumer behaviours, minimal employment security and

emerging trends are threatening leaders to consider nonstandard norms and overschedule
initiatives to sustain profitability. However, such incidents and unorganized employee
engagement policies are creating significant discomforts (Lei et al. 2017). Also, personal
relationships with employees, lack of streamlined recruitment processes and tough decisions
have been hindering talent acquisition and retention policies.

Lack of Alignment

Software development projects incorporate an interdisciplinary and multilayer initiative that

requires high-end specifications and accuracy to get desirable results. As it includes multiple
teams including design, architect, developer and infrastructure development teams, vendors and
suppliers, lack of alignment between stakeholders can affect project outcomes. These factors are
absolute to ensure productivity and efficiency.

Unavailability of Clear Vision

Leaders are lacking to develop proactive long-term visions due to high dimensions of
uncertainties, lack of adequate technological advancements and benchmark innovations.
Unavailability of visionary leadership skills to articulate permissible behaviours and visions are
causing threats to streamline team management and project necessities.

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Insufficient Organizational Culture

Many leaders incorporate a minimalist approach to outline a proactive roadmap for software
development projects in mobile technology as poorly maintained organisation-wide culture
creates comprehensive limitations to foster positive reinforcement capabilities (Bratton, 2020).
Unavailability of vibrant workplace culture, minimum job security and ignorance of executive-
level leaderships can diminish organisational competency to attract top talent.

Poor Execution and Team Structure

Poor execution is highly influenced by the unavailability of self-discipline and the availability of
expertise solutions. However, many leaders are insufficient to supervise a team adequately and
fail to create a multi-generational and multicultural workforce due to lack of expertise and
experienced employees. As software development projects highly relay on individuals' creativity,
wrong team selection can be costly for mobile companies.

Agile Methodology in Mobile Technology

Agile methodology refers to a systematic empirical framework of a software development

program that promotes continuous iteration of software development and testing within a
software development life cycle of the underpinned project while considering concurrent
activities and continuous improvement plans. Agile methodology has become an effective
initiative for mobile technology due to its extensive flexibility, the scope of change management
and responsiveness. It emphasizes four distinct values including individual and team
collaboration over process and tools, comprehensive documentation, customer requirement
collaboration and change management attributes by undertaking an incremental and iterative
process to software design. However, due to fluctuating global economy, inflation rates, material
unavailability, intense competition and regulatory compliances, mobile software development
companies are extensively incorporating eXtreme Programming (XP) to mitigate constantly
changing demands regardless of its functional efficiency and productivity. As mobile technology
undergoes a short SDLC model, XP is significant for leaders due to short lifecycle, high
productivity and change management opportunities by keeping customer requirements in order

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(Anand and Dinakaran, 2016). However, it upholds distinct complexity and vulnerability which
seek executive-level decisions to make decisions and engagement feasible.
Agile XP encompasses six distinct phases, and comprehensive continuous monitoring,
developing and testing mechanism to mitigate predetermined project deliverables. The managers
need to streamline each phase with techno-centric visionaries and customer-focused approaches
to redirect development programs into consideration.
Planning
In the planning phase, the manager is responsible to perform various distinct functions including
the selection of appropriate and talent-based software development project team to engage a
multigenerational and multicultural workforce to execute complex tasks. Systematic evaluation
of project schedule, task assignment status, stakeholder prioritization process and sources of
project funds need to be ensured effectively to minimise occupational threats and uncertainties.
Identification of project requirements, resource allocation capabilities and service level
agreements and compulsory documentation process is necessary to consider to cope with
resource shortage and unavailability of potential suppliers. Security measures including
encryption algorithms, firewalls, data protection measures and regulatory compliances are also
essential to incorporate for seamless development.
Analysis
As agile XP methodology mainly focuses on customer requirements, the managers are required
to collect and analyse detailed descriptions to prioritize requirements, functional capabilities and
non-functional requirements including reliability, accuracy and integrity. Project task assignment
based on prioritised stories is necessary to consider for detailed estimations. The leaders must
define iteration timelines and technological advances to streamline the development, and
comprehensive operational challenges including managerial issues, conflict resolution attributes
and quality measurement indicators are necessary to incorporate within the process (Verstraeten
et al. 2017). The manager is also responsible to deliver resources planning for both development
and QA Teams.
Design
In the design phase of the XP methodology, decomposition of key project activities including
coding, infrastructure development, platform creation and server alignment is necessary to
produce by using proactive project management tools including Gantt chart, checklists, work

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breakdown structure. The managers are responsible for the regression of the automation
framework to testify each part of the software system to evaluate functional and technical
capabilities by using a quality assurance framework, KPIs and ISO standards.
Execution
In the execution phase, assigned teams will perform distinct development tasks including coding,
unit testing and execution of manual testing scenarios to identify any defects. High-end
specifications in defects report, detailed description of each unit and conversion of manual units
into automation regression are necessary for a successful software system. The managers must
engage a systematic approach to enhance communication. Use of centralised embedded
information system, intranet servers and cloud-based storage options can be implemented to
minimise occupational hazards and risks (Ribeiro and Domingues, 2018). Managers are also
responsible to conduct a detailed review of the mid of iteration and End of iteration to evaluate
efficiency.
Wrapping
In the wrapping phase, the leaders can assemble small-scale releases for experimental demos and
reviews to initiate marketing campaigns or client based deliveries. The manager must thoroughly
review change requests, encryption algorithms, security patches and ease-to-use interfaces
through regression testing. The alignment between project scope and sequence alongside budget
and timeframes are necessary to review rigorously to measure financial and operational
excellence, quality measurement indicators and ISO standards to diminish data breaches and
cyberattacks. The leader needs to follow two scoreboards including story cardboard and online
storyboard decomposition schedule and continuous improvement plans as it will facilitate this
amplify organisational skills and competencies for futuristic advancements.
Closure
In Closure, the technical team must complete the software development lifecycle to launch newly
designed mobile technology to secure competitive advancements and benchmark innovations.
Simplified user manuals, ICT based training programs for members and production launch
activities are necessary to execute which ensures SLA guarantee assurance. The leader must
review SOA strategies to document learnings. Streamlined customer services and
accommodations need to be maintained accordingly while identifying key employees based on

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performance and capabilities. A thorough review of story cardboard and online storyboard is
necessary for managers to future references.

Discussions

The Agile XP methodology, releases of software are based on respectively shorter life cycles:
Iteration with a timeframe of 14 days. The managers need to create a checkpoint where any
client requirements can be implemented with customized solutions and ease-to-use interfaces.
However, the fundamental purpose of the implementation of agile XP methodology for mobile
software development projects is to satisfy generic consumer requirements and satisfaction
attributes. implementation of agile methodology can provide various key benefits including small
individuals models for designers, the early look of products, the scope of change management
principles, and especially designed and developed for small software development projects with
shorter SDLC (Gera, 2018). Various distinct errors such as coding infrastructure, end to end
encryption algorithms and budgetary and resource shortage issues can be effectively managed by
project managers to reduce complexity and overhead costs. Also, each iteration phase upholds a
dedicated testing unit to implement regression testing of each module (Lindsjørn et al. 2016).
Significant collaboration between management and teams including tester, developer, designer
and engineer to analyze functional and non-functional requirements, project planning and
development roadmaps.

Conclusion and Critical Evaluation

Leadership is a set of significant skills that applications of such industry-specific knowledge and
techniques to showcase creativity and imagination capabilities. Ethical leaders must confine
open-door communication and feedback loops to emphasize creative insights of team members.
Such collaborative efforts and attempts can be significant to produce creative ambience.
Workplace culture and team collaboration are highly dependent on leadership qualities to
emphasize integrity and honesty. As leaders are considered as a natural talent or creative
directors, extensive educational background regards to leadership skills and decision-making
abilities are necessary to cherish, and adequate encouragement and leadership development
programs can be provided to improve organisational resources and precise value. Also, one of

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the key qualities of prominent leaders includes time management as a significant influencer to
maximize organisational capabilities and individual performance to develop cutting edge
technologies for the betterment of the mobile technology. Leadership development programs,
extensive knowledge distribution and adequate application of leadership theories including Trait
Theory and Transformational theory to improve leadership skills and individual capabilities
regardless of department and job position.

Appraisal

The mobile technology has gained an enormous reputation as the globalization of trade and
technological advancements, cross border operations and global value chain and high product
demands have been incredibly increasing. Systematic software development projects, proactive
entrepreneurial spirit, techno-capitalism perspectives and well-maintained project management
practices have facilitated the mobile industry to gain mainstream popularity while implementing
industry-specific software development principles. Organisations are extensively incorporating
multi-domestic and globalised economies, alongside the empirical framework of the software
development lifecycle to design, develop and test quality software with high-end specifications.
This systematic empirical framework described the urgency of fact-driven leadership
development programs. The study also highlighted key issues that current leaders are
experiencing in the mobile technology industry.

Reflection

In the modern contemporary world, extensive digitalization and computerization attributes have
influenced commercial ventures to create standardized corporate websites to incorporate cost-
effective and time-saving solutions for structural business. As education reformations,
availability of disruptive innovations and emerging trends like e-learning and digitized
communication channels have adequately shifted consumer's engagement, we have developed a
corporate website namely " Facenet Management Training" to receive ample business
opportunities through electronic media for education. The website is designed and developed to
provide ease-to-use interfaces, encryption algorithms and student enrollment system and
payment options. The website will facilitate increased brand popularity and scope of e-learning

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courses, as it adequately incorporates user-friendly interfaces, graphic designs and customised
menus to ensure satisfaction attributes and high market value. The website development project
cost is £999, and took 3 months timeframe to complete alongside yearly maintenance of costs of
£250. For seamless operations, availability of strong internet bandwidth is necessary, and
upholds minimum restrictions.
During the website development project through XP agile methodology, we have faced
significant challenges to create standardised website design and navigation accuracy, and had to
reshape the design to mitigate font issues. Primarily, the website menu was scrollable, and
GDPR policies were not included within the system. However, such risks have limited access to
ruin website functional capabilities, we have addressed scroll function by changing menu
functions. Furthermore, we have added GDPR policy within the system and provided consent for
r better user experience. In addition, primarily, the website was incapable to align Gantt chart
with PDF format, and implemented necessary changes to effectively align Gantt chart with PDF.
In contrast to futuristic progresses, the website can face limited risks including fraudulent
activities, payment failures, data breaches and cybersecurity issues that may affect website's
functional capabilities and accountability. However, we have added end-to-end encryption
algorithms, firewalls and multilayer security protocols to minimise fake bookings and profiles.
Increasing fake bookings and profiles can affect user's satisfaction attributes as they can find
difficulties to book specific programs. As the website encompasses valuable personal
information of consumers including personal details, credit card payment and subscription
preferences, deceptive involvements and cyberattacks can hinder seamless usability of the
website. Such activities can affect a company's reputation, and may face comprehensive
compensation penalties due to mismanagement of valuable information. However, ICT training
programs and proactive user manuals are provided to enhance functional and non-functional
standards of the Facenet.

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