Stressor‐burnout relationship in software development teams

Abstract

Burnout is an experience relevant not only to psychosoclal professions, but also to technical work-It is predicted that in a technical profession work stressors are related to burnout and that this relationship is moderated by control at work, task requirements. and the quality of team interaction-In a sample of 180 software professionals trom 29 software development projects, stressors were found to be positively related to burnout measures. Contnil at work, complexity at work, and openness to criticism within the team were all found to be significantly negatively related to lack of identification. Moderated regression analyses revealed that high cognitive requirements, high learning requirements, and low competition within the team enhanced the relationship between stressors and burnout.

Burnout among nurses: Extending the Job Demand-Control-Support model with work-home interference

“…In most studies on burnout, the strain hypothesis, at least partly, receives support (Landsbergis, 1988;Melamed, Kushnir, & Meir, 1991;Sonnentag, Brodbeck, Heinbokel, & Stolte, 1994). Also the "iso-strain" hypothesis has received support (Melamed et al, 1991).…”

Knowledge jobs - how to manage without burnout?

“…Time pressure was found to be strongly related to burnout among the managers of an industrial corporation. The relation of stressors, including time pressure, to burnout were strengthened in software development teams if the cognitive requirements and learning requirements were high (15).…”

Study of job burnout in technical writers and technical illustrators/designers at LLNL

“…Prevalence of burnout in technical professions was studied several years ago, but these studies just touch the surface of the problem. Studies have been done on information systems managers (Weiss, 1983), male and female engineers (Etzion, 1988), and software development teams (Sonnentag, S., Brodbeck, F., Heinbokel, T., & Stolte, W.,1994). Now it is time to take into consideration and to study the problem of job burnout in other technical professions.…”

“…A more current project by Sonnentag, Heinbokel, and Stolte (1994) Questionnaires and interviews were used to test five hypotheses for the study. Cognitive, learning and communication requirements were ascertained during an interview, while burnout was assessed with a 16-item measure based on the Maslach Burnout Inventory.…”

“…Out of 186 people interviewed, only 166 returned the questionnaires. Sonnentag et al (1994) also felt that a weakness of questionnaires lies in possible individual response biases, leading to an overestimation of the correlations between two variables. In order to rule out that possibility, aggregated measures were used.…”