Agile Practices and Motivation
Reutman Oliveira, César França · 2019
The motivation of software engineers has been a recurring object of study with the aim of seeking a greater and healthier performance in software development teams. Although few studies associate the use of agile methods with motivation, they have not been able to explain the reasons beyond this connection. Oriented by a theory of work motivation of software engineers, this paper aims to investigate how agile practices are related to the motivation of these individuals. A research questionnaire was designed to evaluate the correlation between the use of agile attributes and job characteristics associated to work motivation. A total of 90 software engineers in 12 Brazilian states and 48 different companies participated in the survey, and results indicate that 24 of 25 of the agile attributes have significant correlations with at least one of the characteristics of the work that ignites motivation. Following agile requirements management process and Delivering valuable functionalities earlier are among the most impacting practices.