Motivation in Software Engineering: A systematic literature review

Abstract

__________________________________________________________________________________________This research presents a systematic literature review of motivation in Software Engineering. The objective is to report on what motivates and de-motivates developers, and how existing models address motivation. The majority of studies find Software Engineers form a distinguishable occupational group. Results indicate that Software Engineers are likely to be motivated according to: their 'characteristics' (e.g., their need for variety); internal 'controls' (e.g., their personality) and external 'moderators' (e.g., their career stage). Models of motivation in Software Engineering are disparate and do not reflect the complex needs of Software Engineers in their different career stages, cultural and environmental settings.

Employee retention and turnover in global software development

“…Previous studies have shown that developer motivation and attrition are linked: highly motivated developers are more likely to remain in their current jobs, while lack of motivation may result in attrition [5,38]. This may be part of the reason that some GSD projects experience high staff turnover, and others do not: the nature of the work, and the working environment, in different kinds of GSD may reduce or exacerbate staff turnover.…”

“…Traditionally software engineers were thought of as introverted, and this view was supported by many studies coming from Couger and colleagues' who measured Social Needs Strength of engineers [9] in their Job Diagnostics Survey. This view is not universal, as seen in the body of more recent research that identified software engineers as sociable people [5]. Certainly, the need for software engineers to communicate and relate to others is crucial in a GSD context [28]; this relatedness is one of the three dimensions of Ryan and Deci's "self determination theory" [34] (Fig.…”

“…Another outcome is project success, where Verner et al [37] found a positive correlation between motivation and software engineering/management agreements on project success. Table 2 gives a breakdown of software engineer characteristics as listed in Beecham et al [5], and how these needs are met by working in a distributed environment (as extracted from [4]:…”

“…Looking at the motivators, also in [5], there are several factors that are likely to threaten motivation, for example the study on motivation in GSD [4] hypothesized that, based on case study observations, both extrinsic and intrinsic motivators are challenged. projects is influenced by the identification of participants, the transformational leadership of leaders and an active management style, and the emotions of developers [20]; their study of five open source projects suggests that, to retain developers, they need to contribute early to a project, and focus on coding rather than documentation.…”

Improving Software Development Process through Economic Mechanism Design

“…background, skills, values and motivational needs. Beecham et al [36] identifies several social factors effecting software engineer characteristics. For example, software practitioners prefer challenging tasks and therefore recognition in their work, stability in their organization, and most importantly they prefer to be socially identified with their team or group [36].…”