How do you feel, developer? An explanatory theory of the impact of affects on programming performance

Abstract

Affects-emotions and moods-have an impact on cognitive activities and the working performance of individuals. Development tasks are undertaken through cognitive processes, yet software engineering research lacks theory on affects and their impact on software development activities. In this paper, we report on an interpretive study aimed at broadening our understanding of the psychology of programming in terms of the experience of affects while programming, and the impact of affects on programming performance. We conducted a qualitative interpretive study based on: face-to-face open-ended interviews, in-field observations, and e-mail exchanges. This enabled us to construct a novel explanatory theory of the impact of affects on development performance. The theory is explicated using an established taxonomy framework. The proposed theory builds upon the concepts of events, affects, attractors, focus, goals, and performance. Theoretical and practical implications are given.

What happens when software developers are (un)happy

“…When grouping codes for low cognitive performance and process-related productivity, approximately 55% of the related in-text references deal with productivity and performance drops. Those results are in line with and support the related work in software engineering research (Graziotin et al, 2015a(Graziotin et al, , 2014bMüller and Fritz, 2015;Khan et al, 2010;Wrobel, 2013) which quantified the relationship or attempted to explain the link.…”

“…We also add that addressing happiness can impact the very core prerequisites for software development: cognitive performance, motivation, and a positive atmosphere at the workplace. We note that previous research (Graziotin et al, 2015a) has suggested that intervening on the affect of developers might have relatively low costs and astonishing benefits.…”

“…Aristoteles' eudaimonia: a person is happy because (s)he conducts a satisfactory life full of quality (Haybron, 2005). A review of affect theories is given in (Graziotin et al, 2015c) and the role of the centrality of affect and happiness is discussed in (Graziotin et al, 2015a). communications, and observations of two software developers in the same project.…”

“…The happiness of all stakeholders involved in software development is an essential element of company success (Denning, 2012). Recent research within the scope of behavioral software engineering (Lenberg et al, 2015) has highlighted the relationship between software developer happiness and work-related constructs such as performance and productivity (Graziotin et al, 2015a(Graziotin et al, , 2014bFagerholm et al, 2015;Müller and Fritz, 2015;Ortu et al, 2015), quality (Khan et al, 2010;, and the social interactions between developers (Novielli et al, Email addresses: daniel.graziotin@iste.uni-stuttgart.de (Daniel Graziotin), fabian.fagerholm@helsinki.fi (Fabian Fagerholm), xiaofeng.wang@unibz.it (Xiaofeng Wang), pekka.abrahamsson@jyu.fi (Pekka Abrahamsson) 2015; Fagerholm et al, 2015). Most of the studies to date have investigated the positive side of happiness.…”

Happiness and the Productivity of Software Engineers

“…Much of this can be avoided by task rotation, by taking better decisions, and by actually listening to developers. Several top causes are related to the perception of inadequacy of the self and others, which encourages recent research activities on intervening on the affect of developers [3].…”