Relating Voluntary Turnover with Job Characteristics, Satisfaction and Work Exhaustion - An Initial Study with Brazilian Developers

High rates of turnover among software developers remain, involving additional costs of hiring and training. Voluntary turnover may be due to workplace issues or personal career decisions, but it might as well relate to Job Characteristics, or even Job Satisfaction and Work Exhaustion. This paper reports on an initial study which quantitatively measured those constructs among 78 software developers working in Brazil who left their jobs voluntarily. For this, we adapted well-known survey instruments, namely the JDS from Hackman and Oldham's Job Characteristics Model, and Maslach et al.'s Burnout Measurement. In average, developers demonstrated low to moderate autonomy (3.75, on a 1-7 scale) and satisfaction (4.08), in addition to moderate exhaustion (4.2) before leaving their jobs, while experiencing high task significance (5.15). Also, testers reported significantly lower job satisfaction than programmers. These results allow us to raise interesting hypotheses to be addressed by future studies.Comment: 4 pages, no figures, 3 tables. Final version for ICSE CHASE 201

Misalignment challenges when integrating security requirements into mobile banking application development

This study identifies and explores the core challenge faced when integrating security requirements into the mobile application software development life cycle. Studies on key issues in Information Systems (IS) have been on-going in the past decades, with security moving up the ranks of top issues in IS. Security requirements can be added into mobile application development processes by practising secure coding or by adding a third party security tool. This study gathered data from a single case study and employs grounded theory methodology to reveal misalignment as the core challenge to integrating security requirements into mobile banking application development. Identified forms of misalignment include that between security requirements and (1) external entities, (2) roles, (3) skills and (4) system requirements. Some of the findings indicate the need for further research. Research indicates that mobile application development follows agile methods for development. Agile methods have been compared with Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS). For this reason, research in IS could benefit from studies that focus on CAS as a theory to provide a better explanation on the misalignment issues in mobile application development. From the current study, the research also identified the need to address misalignment issues before embarking on a project involving integrating of security requirements

Effort Estimation Factors for Corrective Software Maintenance Projects: A Qualitative Analysis of Estimation Criteria

In this paper, we identify factors that impact software maintenance effort by exploring expert software maintenance estimators’ knowledge about corrective maintenance projects. We use a qualitative approach to identify the issues important to these experts to derive their effort estimates. We find seventeen factors (rated and rank ordered by importance) that affect corrective maintenance effort and include constructs related to developers, code, defects, and environment. Several of these factors that have a comparably strong influence on corrective maintenance estimation are unique to corrective maintenance and are not generally observed in established software estimation models. The results enhance organizations’ ability to effectively manage maintenance environments by focusing attention on the identified areas. For future research, these results represent an important step toward developing a comprehensive and accurate corrective maintenance effort estimation model

IS Human Capital: Assessing Gaps to Strengthen Skill and Competency Sourcing

Past research has mainly focused on defining information systems (IS) skills and competencies at the industry or global level; it has offered little guidance on best practices for managing IS at the organization level. And yet, a resource-based view indicates that failure to properly manage skills and competencies could lead to suboptimal outcomes such as a loss of IS process knowledge and innovation, an inability to adequately evaluate vendor performance, and a lack of critical skills and competencies needed to meet future demands. In this paper, we examine how one government agency managed its systems for testing personnel. We describe the need for a process to assess IS skills and competencies in order to analyze the gaps and ensure they are filled. A concrete understanding of existing gaps guides sourcing of skills and competencies through hiring, training, internal transfers, and work allocation. This paper presents an effective methodology for this purpose

Investigating the factors which influence the misalignment between developers and testers in agile organizations

The concept of alignment has been addressed in the context of various divisions within organizations but very little research investigates the alignment of the roles within specific sub-units in an organization. Research shows evidence of a misalignment between the role of the software tester and the software developer in software development teams specifically in organizations that adopt agile methodologies to manage their software development projects. It is this misalignment between these two roles and the lack of research on the factors that influence this phenomenon that prompted the study. The study aims to investigate the factors which influence misalignment between developers and testers in agile organizations with specific focus on the social dimension of alignment contrary to most studies that merely address the intellectual dimension of alignment. The research methodology followed a positivist, quantitative and deductive approach. An online questionnaire was designed and distributed to respondents in South Africa (SA) and United States of America (USA). The results show that there are four factors that have an overall influence on the misalignment between developers and testers in agile software development teams. These factors are (1) process non-compliance combined with lack of accountability, (2) conflicting interpersonal skills, (3) lack of shared domain knowledge, specifically lack of developers' knowledge about testing and (4) poor collaboration. Future research can proceed to identify the strategies that agile organizations can adopt alleviate this problem of misalignment

Investigating the factors which influence the misalignment between developers and testers in agile organizations

The concept of alignment has been addressed in the context of various divisions within organizations but very little research investigates the alignment of the roles within specific sub-units in an organization. Research shows evidence of a misalignment between the role of the software tester and the software developer in software development teams specifically in organizations that adopt agile methodologies to manage their software development projects. It is this misalignment between these two roles and the lack of research on the factors that influence this phenomenon that prompted the study. The study aims to investigate the factors which influence misalignment between developers and testers in agile organizations with specific focus on the social dimension of alignment contrary to most studies that merely address the intellectual dimension of alignment. The research methodology followed a positivist, quantitative and deductive approach. An online questionnaire was designed and distributed to respondents in South Africa (SA) and United States of America (USA). The results show that there are four factors that have an overall influence on the misalignment between developers and testers in agile software development teams. These factors are (1) process non-compliance combined with lack of accountability, (2) conflicting interpersonal skills, (3) lack of shared domain knowledge, specifically lack of developers' knowledge about testing and (4) poor collaboration. Future research can proceed to identify the strategies that agile organizations can adopt alleviate this problem of misalignment

Antecedents of perceived dyadic conflict: a multilevel perspective

Past conflict research on teams provides a wealth of conceptual and empirical insight into various aspects of conflict (e.g., when and how different types of conflict affect individual, team, and organizational outcomes). Nevertheless, conflict research thus far has been limited in two key respects. First, we know little about what drives conflict. There has been relatively little empirical research that investigates antecedents of conflict though they have been acknowledged as important. Second, conflict in organizations at the dyad-level has also received insufficient academic attention until recently. In organizational behavior research, conflict is usually conceptualized as a collective experience shared by all team members, and measured accordingly, allowing individual responses to be aggregated to a team level. However, in many cases conflict occurs between two people, and these interpersonal relationships are often not captured in the traditional psychometric approach. To address these limitations, this dissertation focuses on perceived dyadic conflict—individuals’ specific conflict experiences within a team. It also proposes a multi-level model of antecedents of dyadic conflict. Specifically, I argue that understanding perceived dyadic conflict is fundamental to understanding intragroup conflict, based on the observation that all group conflict can be broken down into dyadic interactions among fellow team members. I also argue that dyadic conflict is a function of individual, dyad, and team factors. I developed a study framework for understanding perceived dyadic conflict that considers individuals’ personalities, the extent to which they communicate about work matters and socialize with other team members, and their teams’ levels of psychological safety. The data for this dissertation were collected at a multidisciplinary state research institution located in the Midwest as part of a larger project. These data provide a unique opportunity to examine perceived dyadic conflict in a team setting. Results of the data analysis provide evidence for the claim that individuals’ perceptions of conflict with a fellow team members are affected by individual, interpersonal, and contextual factors. Individuals high in agreeableness are less likely to perceive and experience both task and relationship conflict in dyadic relationships, while individuals high in conscientiousness are more likely to experience both dyadic task and dyadic relationship conflict. Similarly, individuals high in extraversion are more likely to perceive and experience dyadic conflict (for both task and relationship conflict). Interestingly, individuals high in neuroticism are more likely to perceive dyadic task conflict unlike my expectation. Moreover, dyads perceive and experience more dyadic task conflict when two dyad members differ in extraversion. Dyads that have work-related communication report more dyadic task conflict. Teams’ psychological safety climate was found to be a driving factor that increases team members’ perceptions of task conflict in dyadic relationships. This dissertation contributes to conflict and conflict management research by providing empirical evidence about where dyadic conflict comes from by examining antecedents at different levels. This dissertation also breaks down intragroup conflict at the lower-level, dyad-level, where it originates. By doing so, this dissertation provides an explicit understanding of who has dyadic conflicts with whom within a team using dyadic approach and what affects the dyadic conflict to unpack intragroup conflict

Impact of Service Characteristics on Rational and Emotional Components of Information Systems Service Evaluations

Information systems (IS) research and practice have recognized the need to move the IS field to a more service oriented paradigm. This requires a good understanding of how IS services are evaluated and the factors that influence the perceptions of service performance. Measures of IS service quality have provided an insight into the rational/technical factors that influence the evaluation of IS services. Recently, the need for the investigation of additional factors that influence IS service evaluations has been recognized. One such factor that can influence the evaluation of an IS service is the emotional response that the IS service elicits in a recipient. Emotional responses play a major role in building attitudes, beliefs and behavioral intentions. However, IS service research has focused more on the rational aspects of these phenomena while largely ignoring the emotional aspects when explaining IS service evaluations. This research seeks to provide a better understanding of how individuals evaluate IS services by focusing on the salient characteristics of the IS service that can influence these evaluations. To achieve this, the research focuses on two research objectives: (1) to investigate the how the individual components of IS service evaluations – the emotional and rational evaluation components – impact various behaviors associated with the IS service and (2) to investigate how specific, theory driven service characteristics impact the emotional and relational components of IS service evaluation. A controlled experiment is used to investigate IS service evaluations and the characteristics of IS services that influence them. Results suggest that both emotional and rational components of IS service evaluations have significant impacts on behavioral intentions associated with the IS service. Furthermore, findings indicate that while the specificity of service output impacts both the emotional and rational evaluations of the IS service, the complexity of the service task only influences the emotional component by increasing the level of emotional evaluations associated with the service. Proximity between service provider and service recipient was found to have no significant impact on the emotional evaluation of the service

Immigration-Related Identity Markers and Well-Being in Academia: Perceptions of Conflict at Work and Life Satisfaction Among Foreign-Born Professors in the United States

Although immigrant professionals contribute significantly to the American economy, their processes of adaptation to the host country and integration into work departments has not been sufficiently examined. Based on a survey of 241 immigrant professors in the United States, the current study sought to reveal how immigration-related identity markers, that is acculturation strategy adopted and migrant personality, impact the levels of private life satisfaction, work satisfaction, and perceptions of conflict at work. Results of Ordinary Least Squares regression analyses revealed that maintaining a balance between original cultural values and local ones, as well as scoring towards the lower-end of the migrant personality continuum are associated with increased levels of well-being and decreased perceptions of conflict at work. Contrary, maintaining original cultural values without integrating the local ones, as well as scoring high on the migrant personality continuum are associated with low levels of well-being and heightened perceptions of conflict at work. These findings may inform policy makers and scholars of conflict about the issues inherent in the acculturation process of foreign employees, and may help craft interventions that minimize the negative effects of cultural identity-based conflicts

Misalignment - the core challenge in integrating security and privacy requirements into mobile banking application development

This study identifies and explores the core challenge faced when integrating security and privacy requirements into the mobile banking software development life cycle. Studies on key issues in Information Systems (IS) have been on-going for several decades, with security and privacy moving up the ranks of top issues in IS. Security and privacy requirements can be added into the mobile application development processes by practising secure coding, and/or, by adding a third party security tool. This study gathered data from a single case study; it employs grounded theory methodology to reveal misalignment as the core challenge to integrating security and privacy requirements into mobile banking application development. The forms of misalignment are between security and privacy requirements and (1) external entities, (2) roles, (3) skills and (4) system requirements. The nature of the mobile application domain results in the misalignment forms identified above. Some of the findings indicate the need for further research. Research indicates that mobile application development follows agile methods for development. Agile methods have been compared with Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS). For this reason, research in IS could benefit from studies that focus on CAS as a theory to provide a better explanation on the misalignment issues in mobile application development