More Web Proxy on the site http://driver.im/

research-article

Motivated software engineers are engaged and focused, while satisfied ones are happy

Authors:

César França,

Fabio Q. B. da SilvaAuthors Info & Claims

ESEM '14: Proceedings of the 8th ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement

Article No.: 32, Pages 1 - 8

https://doi.org/10.1145/2652524.2652545

Published: 18 September 2014 Publication History

Abstract

Context -- Motivation and job satisfaction are not the same thing, and although business organization research recognized this a long time ago, in Software Engineering research, we have not. As a result, thirty years of research on motivation in software engineering has produced knowledge on what makes software engineers generally happier, but not about how to increase their motivation. Goal -- In this article, we aim to identify visible signs of a software engineer who is motivated to work. Method -- We describe a field study in which 62 practitioners in Brazil reported their view of "motivation" in the context of their practical work. Data was collected by means of audio-recorded semi-structured interviews, and a thematic analysis was applied to identify the most relevant descriptors of motivation. Results -- Our data reveal that (1) motivated Software Engineers are engaged, focused, and collaborative; and (2) the term "motivation" is used as an umbrella term to cover several distinct organizational behaviours that are not necessarily related to the individual's desire to work. Conclusions -- Without a clear picture of the difference between these two concepts, work-based motivation programs may not be designed effectively to address either turnover or performance issues. Overall, this work indicates the need for a more effective conceptual system to investigate and encourage both job satisfaction and work motivation in software engineering research and practice.

References

[1]

Beecham, S., Badoo, N., Hall, T., Robinson, H., and Sharp, H., 2007. Motivation in Software Engineering: A systematic literature review, Information and Software Technology, 50, 860--878.

Digital Library

[2]

França, A. C. C., Gouveia, T. B., Santos, P. C. F., Santana, C. A., and da Silva, F. Q. B., 2011. Motivation in Software Engineering - A Systematic Review Update., In: 15th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering EASE.

[3]

Sharp, H., Badoo, N., Beecham, S., Hall, T., and Robinson, H., 2008. Models of motivation in software engineering, Information and Software Technology.

Digital Library

[4]

França, A. C. C., Felix, A. L., and da Silva, F. Q. B., 2012. Towards an Explanatory Theory of Motivation in Software Engineering: A Qualitative Case Study of a Government Organization, In: International Conference on Evaluation & Assessment in Software Engineering (EASE).

[5]

França, A. C. C., Carneiro, D. E. S., and da Silva, F. Q. B., 2012. Towards an Explanatory Theory of Motivation in Software Engineering: A Qualitative Case Study of a Small Software Company, In: Proceedings of the Brazilian Symposium of Software Engineering (SBES).

Digital Library

[6]

França, A. C. C., Araújo, A. C., and Silva, F. Q. B., 2013. Motivation of Software Engineers: A Qualitative Case Study of a Research and Development Organisation, In: Proceedings of 6th International Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering (CHASE).

[7]

França, A. C. C., da Silva, F. Q. B., Felix, A. L., and Carneiro, D. E., 2013. Motivation in Software Engineering Industrial Practice: A Cross-Case Analysis of Two Software Organisations, Information and Software Technology, Available online.

[8]

Locke, E. A., and Latham, G., 1990. WORK MOTIVATION AND SATISFACTION: Light at the End of the Tunnel, Psychological Science, 240--246.

[9]

Judge, T., Thoresen, C., Bono, J., and Patton, G., 2001. The job satisfaction-job performance relationship: a qualitative and quantitative review, Psychological bulletin, 127, 3, 376--407.

[10]

Boselie, P., Dietz, G., and Boon, C., 2005. Commonalities and contradictions in HRM and performance research, Human Resource Management Journal, 15, 3, 67--94.

[11]

Hackman, J. R., and Oldham, G. R., 1976. Motivation through the design of work: test of a theory, Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 250--279.

[12]

Latham, G., and Ernst, T., 2006. Keys to motivating tomorrow's workforce, Human Resource Management Review, 16, 2, 181--198.

[13]

Amabile, T. M., and Kramer, S., 2011. The progress principle: using small wins to ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at work, Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing.

[14]

Locke, E. A., 1969. What is job satisfaction?, Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 309--336 (1969).

[15]

Golembiewski, R. T., 2000. Handbook of Organizational Behavior, 2 ed., New York: Marcel Dekker Inc.

[16]

Weiss, H. M., 2002. Deconstructing job satisfaction: Separating evaluations, beliefs and affective experiences, Human Resource Management Review, 12, 173--194.

[17]

Locke, E. A., 1976. The nature and causes of job satisfaction, in Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Chicago, Rand McNally, 1297--1349.

[18]

Ambrose, M. L., and Kulik, C. T., 1999. Old Friends, New Faces: Motivation Research in the 1990s, Journal of Management, 25, 3, 231--292.

[19]

Oldham, G. R., and Hackman, J. R., 2005. How Job Characteristics Theory Happened, in The Oxford handbook of management theory: The process of theory development, Smith, K. G. and Hitt, M. A., Eds., Oxford, Oxford University Press, 151--170.

[20]

Hall, T., Badoo, N., Beecham, S., Robinson, H., and Sharp, H., 2009. A systematic review of Theory use in studies investigating the motivations of software engineers., ACM Trans. Soft. Eng. Methodol., 18, 3.

Digital Library

[21]

Maslow, A., 1954. Motivation and Personality.

[22]

Herzberg, F., 1964. One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees?, Harvard Business Review.

[23]

Vroom, V. H., 1964. Work and Motivation, New York: Wiley.

[24]

Locke, E. A., 1968. Toward a Theory of Task Motivation and Incentives, Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 3, 157--189.

[25]

R. Hackman, J., Oldham, G., Janson, R., and Purdy, K., 1975. A New Strategy for Job Enrichment, California Management Review, 57--71.

[26]

S. Cruzes, D., and Dybå, T., 2011. Research synthesis in software engineering: A tertiary study, Information and Software Technology, 53, 5, 440--455.

Digital Library

[27]

Sach, R., Sharp, H., and Petre, M., 2010. Continued involvement in software development: motivational factors, In: Proceedings of Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM).

Digital Library

[28]

Korunka, C., Hoonaker, P., and Carayon, P., 2008. Quality of working life and turnover intention in information technology work, Human Factors and Ergonomics in Manufacturing & Service Industries, 18, 4, 409--423.

Digital Library

[29]

Potter, L. E., von Hellens, L. A., and Nielsen, S. H., 2009. Childhood interest in IT and the choice of IT as a career: the experiences of a group of IT, In: Proceedings of ACM Annual Conference of the Special Interest Group Management Information Systems and Computer Personnel Research (SIGCPR).

Digital Library

[30]

Benbya, H., and Belbaly, N., 2010. Understanding Developers' Motives in Open Source Projects: A Multi-Theoretical Framework, Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 27, 30.

[31]

Hilkert, D., Benlian, A., and Hess, T., 2010. Motivational Drivers to Develop Apps for Social Software-Platforms: The Example of Facebook, In: Proceedings of American Conference on Information Systems.

[32]

Wang, Y., 2009. What motivate software engineers to refactor source code? Evidences from professional developers, In: Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance, (ICSM).

[33]

Jørgensen, N., 2007. Developer autonomy in the FreeBSD open source project, Journal of Management and Governance, 11, 2, 119--128.

[34]

Beecham, S., Sharp, H., Badoo, N., Hall, T., and Robinson, H., 2007. Does the XP environment meet the motivational needs of the software developer? An empirical study, In: AGILE 2007.

Digital Library

[35]

da Silva, F. Q. B., and França, A. C. C., 2012. Towards understanding the underlying structure of motivational factors for software engineers to guide the definition of motivational programs, Journal of Systems and Software (JSS), 85, 2, 216--226.

Digital Library

[36]

Corbin, J., and Strauss, A., 2008. Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory, 3rd ed., Sage Publications.

[37]

Noblit, G. W., and Hare, R. D., 1988. Meta-Ethnography: Synthesizing Qualitative Studies (Qualitative Research Methods), Sage Publications, Inc.

[38]

Cruzes, D. S., and Dybå, T., 2011. Recommended Steps for Thematic Synthesis in Software Engineering, In: International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM).

Digital Library

[39]

Maslow, A. H., 1943. Preface to motivation theory, Psychosomatic Medicine, 85--92.

[40]

Schwartz, S. H. (1999). A Theory of Cultural Values and Some Implications for Work, Applied psychology: an international review, 48(1).

Cited By

Straubinger PFraser GRoychoudhury APaiva AAbreu RStorey MGama KSiegmund J(2024)Gamifying a Software Testing Course with Continuous IntegrationProceedings of the 46th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training10.1145/3639474.3640054(34-45)Online publication date: 14-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3639474.3640054
Straubinger PFraser GRoychoudhury APaiva AAbreu RStorey M(2024)Improving Testing Behavior by Gamifying IntelliJProceedings of the IEEE/ACM 46th International Conference on Software Engineering10.1145/3597503.3623339(1-13)Online publication date: 20-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3597503.3623339
Hicks CLee CRamsey M(2024)Developer Thriving: Four Sociocognitive Factors That Create Resilient Productivity on Software TeamsIEEE Software10.1109/MS.2024.338295741:4(68-77)Online publication date: 3-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/MS.2024.3382957
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Motivated software engineers are engaged and focused, while satisfied ones are happy
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Collaboration in software development
      1. Programming teams

Recommendations

Competency profiling for software engineers: literature review and a new model
PCI '15: Proceedings of the 19th Panhellenic Conference on Informatics

Today's ICT sector is fast growing and very competitive. Prospective employees and specially software engineers are competing hard in ICT companies where there is a variety of roles and positions requiring different skills and competencies. So, there is ...
Whither (away) software engineers in SBSE?
CMSBSE '13: Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Combining Modelling and Search-Based Software Engineering

This challenges and open problems paper discusses the role of software engineers when combining modeling with Search-Based Software Engineering (SBSE). With SBSE techniques increasingly providing insights into difficult software modeling problems, the ...
What Characterizes a Good Software Tester? A Survey in Four Norwegian Companies
ICTSS 2014: Proceedings of the 26th IFIP WG 6.1 International Conference on Testing Software and Systems - Volume 8763

The aim of this paper is to identify the most favourable perceived characteristics of software testers and contrast them with the group of existing software engineers' characteristics provided by prior research. We conducted a qualitative survey among ...

Comments

Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

ESEM '14: Proceedings of the 8th ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement

September 2014

461 pages

ISBN:9781450327749

DOI:10.1145/2652524

General Chair:
Maurizio Morisio
Politecnico di Torino, Italy
,
Program Chairs:
Tore Dybå
Sintef, Norway
,
Marco Torchiano
Politecnico di Torino, Italy

Copyright © 2014 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 18 September 2014

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Funding Sources

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico

Conference

ESEM '14

Sponsor:

SIGSOFT

ESEM '14: 2014 ACM-IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement

September 18 - 19, 2014

Torino, Italy

Acceptance Rates

ESEM '14 Paper Acceptance Rate 23 of 123 submissions, 19%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 130 of 594 submissions, 22%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

29
Total Citations
View Citations
587
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)20
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)3

Reflects downloads up to 22 Dec 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Straubinger PFraser GRoychoudhury APaiva AAbreu RStorey MGama KSiegmund J(2024)Gamifying a Software Testing Course with Continuous IntegrationProceedings of the 46th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training10.1145/3639474.3640054(34-45)Online publication date: 14-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3639474.3640054
Straubinger PFraser GRoychoudhury APaiva AAbreu RStorey M(2024)Improving Testing Behavior by Gamifying IntelliJProceedings of the IEEE/ACM 46th International Conference on Software Engineering10.1145/3597503.3623339(1-13)Online publication date: 20-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3597503.3623339
Hicks CLee CRamsey M(2024)Developer Thriving: Four Sociocognitive Factors That Create Resilient Productivity on Software TeamsIEEE Software10.1109/MS.2024.338295741:4(68-77)Online publication date: 3-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/MS.2024.3382957
Shameem MKumar CChandra BAli Khan ANadeem Ahmed MVerner JNadeem MAzeem Akbar M(2024)The impact of personality traits and cultural values on coordination effectiveness: A study of software development teams effectivenessJournal of Software: Evolution and Process10.1002/smr.2652Online publication date: 4-Feb-2024
https://doi.org/10.1002/smr.2652
Ribeiro DLima RFrança CSouza ASilva IPinto G(2023)Understanding Self-Efficacy in Software Engineering Industry: An Interview studyProceedings of the 27th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering10.1145/3593434.3593467(101-110)Online publication date: 14-Jun-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3593434.3593467
Souza HWiese ISteinmacher IRé R(2022)A characterization study of testing contributors and their contributions in open source projects.Proceedings of the XXXVI Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering10.1145/3555228.3555244(95-105)Online publication date: 5-Oct-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3555228.3555244
Hidellaarachchi DGrundy JHoda RMueller I(2022)The Influence of Human Aspects on Requirements Engineering-related Activities: Software Practitioners’ PerspectiveACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/354694332:5(1-37)Online publication date: 6-Jul-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3546943
Paxton AVaroquaux NHoldgraf CGeiger R(2022)Community, Time, and (Con)text: A Dynamical Systems Analysis of Online Communication and Community Health among Open‐Source Software CommunitiesCognitive Science10.1111/cogs.1313446:5Online publication date: 17-May-2022
https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.13134
Hidellaarachchi DGrundy JHoda RMadampe K(2022)The Effects of Human Aspects on the Requirements Engineering Process: A Systematic Literature ReviewIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2021.305189848:6(2105-2127)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2021.3051898
Restrepo-Tamayo LGasca-Hurtado G(2022)Human Aspects in Software Development: A Systematic Mapping StudyCollaboration Technologies and Social Computing10.1007/978-3-031-20218-6_1(1-22)Online publication date: 23-Oct-2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20218-6_1
Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents