Towards Understanding Motivation in Software Engineering
A. César, César França · 2012
Understanding motivation of software engineers has important implications for industrial practice. Motivation is a complex construct that seems to be affected by diverse environmental conditions and is likely to be moderated by personality and individual values, beliefs, and needs. Although research on motivation in software engineering has made important scientific progress, the majority of the methods adopted quantitative approaches, towards generalizable statements. Given the complexity of the human behavior, contextualized and explanatory theories are needed to account for this diversity. This article describes a research agenda of a PhD project that aims to build explanatory theories of motivation in software organizations. As research approach, it brings together qualitative evidence-based empirical methods such as systematic literature review, case studies and meta-ethnography. Research phases, current status, threats to validity and future plans are described in details but, since it is an ongoing work, it claims for feedback from the community in order to improve the general research consistency and credibility.