Soft Competencies and Satisfaction Levels for Software Engineers: A Unified Framework

Abstract

The importance of software engineers' competency has long been established as a key pillar for the development of robust software in order to achieve quality software. Software engineering competency research is not necessarily lacking. Nevertheless, the satisfaction derived from using software competency needs more investigation. The aim of this study is to identify soft competencies from empirical data and create satisfaction levels for software engineers' soft competencies. The result shows 63 soft competencies with three different satisfaction levels consisting of basic, performance and delighters. The paper contributes to the SEC research by highlighting the satisfaction levels of soft competency for the benefit of the educators (academia), software engineers (possessor) and users of software competency (practitioner).