13,770 research outputs found

    The Affect of Software Developers: Common Misconceptions and Measurements

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    The study of affects (i.e., emotions, moods) in the workplace has received a lot of attention in the last 15 years. Despite the fact that software development has been shown to be intellectual, creative, and driven by cognitive activities, and that affects have a deep influence on cognitive activities, software engineering research lacks an understanding of the affects of software developers. This note provides (1) common misconceptions of affects when dealing with job satisfaction, motivation, commitment, well-being, and happiness; (2) validated measurement instruments for affect measurement; and (3) our recommendations when measuring the affects of software developers.Comment: 2 pages. Research note to be presented at the 2015 IEEE/ACM 8th International Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering (CHASE 2015

    Role clarity deficiencies can wreck agile teams

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    Background One of the twelve agile principles is to build projects around motivated individuals and trust them to get the job done. Such agile teams must self-organize, but this involves conflict, making self-organization difficult. One area of difficulty is agreeing on everybody’s role. Background What dynamics arise in a self-organizing team from the negotiation of everybody’s role? Method We conceptualize observations from five agile teams (work observations, interviews) by Charmazian Grounded Theory Methodology. Results We define role as something transient and implicit, not fixed and named. The roles are characterized by the responsibilities and expectations of each team member. Every team member must understand and accept their own roles (Local role clarity) and everbody else’s roles (Team-wide role clarity). Role clarity allows a team to work smoothly and effectively and to develop its members’ skills fast. Lack of role clarity creates friction that not only hampers the day-to-day work, but also appears to lead to high employee turnover. Agile coaches are critical to create and maintain role clarity. Conclusions Agile teams should pay close attention to the levels of Local role clarity of each member and Team-wide role clarity overall, because role clarity deficits are highly detrimental

    Environmental Factors Influencing Individual Decision-Making Behavior in Software Project: A Systematic Literature Review

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    As one of the crucial human aspects, individual decision-making behavior that may affect the quality of a software project is adaptive to the environment in which the individual is. However, no comprehensive reference framework of the environmental factors influencing individual decision-making behavior in software projects is presently available. This paper undertakes a systematic literature review (SLR) to gain insight into existing studies on this topic. After a careful SLR process, 40 studies were targeted to solve this question. Based on these extracted studies, we first provided a taxonomy of environmental factors comprising eight categories. Then a total of 237 factors are identified and classified using these eight categories, and some major environmental factors of each category are listed in the paper. The environmental factors listing and the taxonomy can help researchers and practitioners to better understand and predict the behavior of individuals during decision making and to design more effective solutions to improve people management in software projects

    Guidelines Towards Better Participation of Older Adults in Software Development Processes using a new SPIRAL Method and Participatory Approach

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    This paper presents a new method of engaging older participants in the process of application and IT solutions development for older adults for emerging IT and tech startups. A new method called SPIRAL (Support for Participant Involvement in Rapid and Agile software development Labs) is proposed which adds both sustainability and flexibility to the development process with older adults. This method is based on the participatory approach and user empowerment of older adults with the aid of a bootstrapped Living Lab concept and it goes beyond well established user-centered and empathic design. SPIRAL provides strategies for direct involvement of older participants in the software development processes from the very early stage to support the agile approach with rapid prototyping, in particular in new and emerging startup environments with limited capabilities, including time, team and resources

    How Do You Feel, Developer? An Explanatory Theory of the Impact of Affects on Programming Performance

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    Affects---emotions and moods---have an impact on cognitive activities and the working performance of individuals. Development tasks are undertaken through cognitive processes, yet software engineering research lacks theory on affects and their impact on software development activities. In this paper, we report on an interpretive study aimed at broadening our understanding of the psychology of programming in terms of the experience of affects while programming, and the impact of affects on programming performance. We conducted a qualitative interpretive study based on: face-to-face open-ended interviews, in-field observations, and e-mail exchanges. This enabled us to construct a novel explanatory theory of the impact of affects on development performance. The theory is explicated using an established taxonomy framework. The proposed theory builds upon the concepts of events, affects, attractors, focus, goals, and performance. Theoretical and practical implications are given.Comment: 24 pages, 2 figures. Postprin

    Towards a Behavioral Software Engineering

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