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What Motivates Software Engineers Working in Global Software Development?

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Book cover Product-Focused Software Process Improvement (PROFES 2015)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 9459))

Abstract

Context: Working in a distributed environment poses new challenges to software engineer motivation.

Problem: Where should global project managers focus their efforts so that they have the best chance of motivating their teams, for higher staff retention, increased productivity and improved software quality?

Method: We asked a group of software engineers attending a workshop on global collaboration to complete a survey on software engineer motivation. We then identified motivation themes in the responses. Finally, we mapped these themes to software engineer motivators identified in previous research.

Results: Thirteen participants completed the survey. Analysis of the results yielded 27 motivation categories. The vast majority (23 of 27) were partially or wholly mapped to Intrinsic motivators.

Implications: We conclude that Global Software Development projects that relegate some teams to performing routine tasks (such as maintenance or testing) will experience lower productivity and quality due to demotivation. Finally, we hypothesize that GSD introduces new motivators, such as opportunities to travel and interact with different cultures.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Lero, The Irish Software Research Centre, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland

    Sarah Beecham & John Noll

Authors
  1. Sarah Beecham
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  2. John Noll
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sarah Beecham .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Norwegian Univ. of Science and Technol., Trondheim, Norway

    Pekka Abrahamsson

  2. Free University of Bolzano, Bolzano, Italy

    Luis Corral

  3. University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland

    Markku Oivo

  4. Free University of Bolzano, Bozen, Italy

    Barbara Russo

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© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Beecham, S., Noll, J. (2015). What Motivates Software Engineers Working in Global Software Development?. In: Abrahamsson, P., Corral, L., Oivo, M., Russo, B. (eds) Product-Focused Software Process Improvement. PROFES 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9459. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26844-6_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26844-6_14

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-26843-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-26844-6

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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