Performance Alignment Work: How software developers experience the continuous adaptation of team performance in Lean and Agile environments

Fagerholm, Fabian; Ikonen, Marko; Kettunen, Petri; Münch, Jürgen; Roto, Virpi; Abrahamsson, Pekka

doi:10.1016/j.infsof.2015.01.010

Cited by 61 publications

(67 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…Another theory that relates affective experiences to development performance is the Performance Alignment Work theory (Fagerholm et al, 2015), which explains a continuous cycle of becoming aware of, interpreting, and adjusting to changing performance demands in and beyond the organizational environment that software development teams are situated in. The theory also explains the ingredients that practitioners consider necessary to form and maintain high-performing teams, which are especially adept at carrying out the cycle.…”

Section: Affect and Happiness In Software Engineering Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

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What happens when software developers are (un)happy

Graziotin

Fagerholm

Wang

et al. 2018

Journal of Systems and Software

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168

114

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The growing literature on affect among software developers mostly reports on the linkage between happiness, software quality, and developer productivity. Understanding happiness and unhappiness in all its components -positive and negative emotions and moods -is an attractive and important endeavor. Scholars in industrial and organizational psychology have suggested that understanding happiness and unhappiness could lead to cost-effective ways of enhancing working conditions, job performance, and to limiting the occurrence of psychological disorders. Our comprehension of the consequences of (un)happiness among developers is still too shallow, being mainly expressed in terms of development productivity and software quality. In this paper, we study what happens when developers are happy and unhappy while developing software. Qualitative data analysis of responses given by 317 questionnaire participants identified 42 consequences of unhappiness and 32 of happiness. We found consequences of happiness and unhappiness that are beneficial and detrimental for developers' mental well-being, the software development process, and the produced artifacts. Our classification scheme, available as open data enables new happiness research opportunities of cause-effect type, and it can act as a guideline for practitioners for identifying damaging effects of unhappiness and for fostering happiness on the job.Note:. the present PDF is the accepted version of Graziotin, D., Fagerholm, F., Wang, X., & Abrahamsson, P. (2018). What happens when software developers are (un)happy .

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Section: Affect and Happiness In Software Engineering Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…See(Graziotin et al, 2015a) and(Fagerholm et al, 2015) for our stance on a definition of productivity and performance in software engineering.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

What happens when software developers are (un)happy

Graziotin

Fagerholm

Wang

et al. 2018

Journal of Systems and Software

Self Cite

168

114

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This finding is consistent with Carmine et al (2016) reporting that team's disregard of structures and engineering processes lead to deterioration of product architecture. Fagerholm et al (2015) reports a study on different factors affecting developer performance in lean and agile environments. In this study performance is used to benchmark efficiency and effectiveness of a team.…”

Section: Software Engineering Professional Practice Knowledge Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

Software engineering in start-up companies: An analysis of 88 experience reports

2018

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Context Start-up companies have become an important supplier of innovation and softwareintensive products. The flexibility and reactiveness of start-ups enables fast development and launch of innovative products. However, a majority of software start-up companies fail before achieving any success. Among other factors, poor software engineering could be a significant contributor to the challenges experienced by start-ups. However, the state-ofpractice of software engineering in start-ups, as well as the utilization of state-of-the-art is largely an unexplored area. Objective In this study we investigate how software engineering is applied in start-up context with a focus to identify key knowledge areas and opportunities for further research. Method We perform a multi-vocal exploratory study of 88 start-up experience reports. We develop a custom taxonomy to categorize the reported software engineering practices and their interrelation with business aspects, and apply qualitative data analysis to explore influences and dependencies between the knowledge areas. Results We identify the most frequently reported software engineering (requirements engineering, software design and quality) and business aspect (vision and strategy development) knowledge areas, and illustrate their relationships. We also present a summary of how relevant software engineering knowledge areas are implemented in start-ups and identify potentially useful practices for adoption in start-ups. Conclusions The results enable a more focused research on engineering practices in startups. We conclude that most engineering challenges in start-ups stem from inadequacies in requirements engineering. Many promising practices to address specific engineering challenges exists, however more research on adaptation of established practices, and validation of new start-up specific practices is needed.

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“…We designed our survey with the stated aim of gaining understanding of the characterization of the unhappiness of developers and the causes of unhappiness in software development. We phrased the questions in our survey by following guidelines from the literature [7,55] and from our prior experience with the research topic [18][19][20][32][33][34][35][36][37]. We phrased the questions to avoid priming specific answers to the respondents.…”

Section: Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the Unhappiness of Software Developers

Graziotin

Fagerholm

Wang

et al. 2017

Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering

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The happy-productive worker thesis states that happy workers are more productive. Recent research in software engineering supports the thesis, and the ideal of flourishing happiness among software developers is often expressed among industry practitioners. However, the literature suggests that a cost-effective way to foster happiness and productivity among workers could be to limit unhappiness. Psychological disorders such as job burnout and anxiety could also be reduced by limiting the negative experiences of software developers. Simultaneously, a baseline assessment of (un)happiness and knowledge about how developers experience it are missing. In this paper, we broaden the understanding of unhappiness among software developers in terms of (1) the software developer population distribution of (un)happiness, and (2) the causes of unhappiness while developing software. We conducted a large-scale quantitative and qualitative survey, incorporating a psychometrically validated instrument for measuring (un)happiness, with 2 220 developers, yielding a rich and balanced sample of 1 318 complete responses. Our results indicate that software developers are a slightly happy population, but the need for limiting the unhappiness of developers remains. We also identified 219 factors representing causes of unhappiness while developing software. Our results, which are available as open data, can act as guidelines for practitioners in management positions and developers in general for fostering happiness on the job. We suggest considering happiness in future studies of both human and technical aspects in software engineering. CCS CONCEPTS•Social and professional topics → Project and people management; •Applied computing → Psychology; •Software and its engineering → Software creation and management; Programming teams;Permission to make digital

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Performance Alignment Work: How software developers experience the continuous adaptation of team performance in Lean and Agile environments

Cited by 61 publications

References 52 publications

What happens when software developers are (un)happy

What happens when software developers are (un)happy

Software engineering in start-up companies: An analysis of 88 experience reports

On the Unhappiness of Software Developers

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