Comparative Analysis of Job Satisfaction in Agile and Non-agile Software Development Teams

Abstract

Abstract. Software engineering is fundamentally driven by economics. One of the issues that software teams face is employee turnover which has a serious economic impact. The effect of job dissatisfaction on high turnover is consistently supported by evidence from multiple disciplines. The study investigates if and how job satisfaction relates to development processes that are being used and the determinants of job satisfaction across a wide range of teams, regions and employees. A moderate positive correlation between the level of experience with agile methods and the overall job satisfaction was found. The evidence suggests that there are twice as many members of agile teams who are satisfied with their jobs (vs members of non-agile teams). The ability to influence decisions that affect you, the opportunity to work on interesting projects, and the relationships with users were found to be statistically significant satisfiers.

Agile methods rapidly replacing traditional methods at Nokia: A survey of opinions on agile transformation

“…would it be possible that only those respondents who are more satisfied with agile methods answered the survey. Some smaller studies show similar results [27,28], so this is likely out of the question.…”

Does the XP environment meet the motivational needs of the software developer? An empirical study

“…Continuing the positive theme, Melnik and Maurer [12] empirically compared job satisfaction in Agile and Non-Agile Software development teams finding that the greater the experience of working in an Agile environment the greater the job satisfaction. Melnik and Maurer study is particularly helpful in linking job satisfaction to motivation, ".. the benefits of higher job satisfaction mentioned have been: … increased individual team morale, motivation, performance productivity and retention."…”

“…[8][9][10], that gives greater job satisfaction [11,12], reduces the software development cost [13] and increases code quality [14]. Yet no study has placed the known and accepted XP values and characteristics directly in line with developer preferences coming from a traditional background, to show where needs are met and where values are challenged or in some cases are missing altogether.…”

Do XP customer-developer interactions impact motivation? findings from an industrial case study

“…Tessem and Maurer [29] discuss motivation in agile teams. Although most of the issues explored are related to "the work", some do relate to customer-developer interactions.…”