Title
A survey on project factors that motivate Finnish software engineers
Abstract
Previous studies suggest that motivation is a critical factor in developer productivity and project outcome, i.e., software project failures are significantly associated with low motivation of software teams. Surveys with software engineers also indicate that culture can affect software development team motivation through differences in developers' motivational factors. In this study, we conduct a survey with 15 Finnish software engineers and 21 non-Finnish software engineers who live in Finland to investigate 1) the relationship between team motivation and project outcome, and 2) the factors that motivate Finnish software engineers. We compare the motivational factors found from the Finnish data with those identified in prior research with developers from four different countries. An analysis of the data from our 36 subjects indicates that project outcome is not associated with team motivation in Finland though this result contradicts prior research. There is a single motivational factor, “team work” that appears to be culturally independent. Unique team motivational factors for Finnish software engineers are found to be “the authority of project manager” and “the vision of project manager”. Our results indicate that cultural differences affect team motivation and that project managers need to consider these when working in a global environment.
Year
DOI
Venue
2014
10.1109/RCIS.2014.6861052
Research Challenges in Information Science
Keywords
Field
DocType
cultural aspects,personnel,project management,software development management,team working,Finnish software engineers,cultural differences,developer productivity,motivational factors,project factors,project manager authority,project manager vision,project outcome,software development team motivation,software project failures,team work,culture,motivational factors,software development team motivation,software project outcome
Personal software process,Software review,Systems engineering,Software peer review,Knowledge management,Software project management,Project management triangle,Project manager,Engineering,Team software process,Social software engineering
Conference
ISSN
Citations 
PageRank 
2151-1357
2
0.37
References 
Authors
21
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Ayşe Tosun Mısırlı122110.50
June M. Verner2125575.85
Jouni Markkula325025.91
Markku Oivo465081.11