Motivation and Process Improvement

Abstract

Most discussions of people issues in software organizations concern the developers, their capabilities, and their motivations. However, lots of other people are involved in developing software and we must also consider their behavior. In this paper, we discuss people issues from a broad perspective. We address the principal issues concerning developers and their teams, and we also talk about the other people in the organization and how their behavior can affect the development work. Our objective is to show how the attitudes and concerns of the people in the entire integrated development community can help or hurt the work of developing, supporting, and enhancing software. Since motivation and behavior are such enormous subjects, an in-depth discussion could easily fill several volumes. So, we characterize only the principal issues and discuss the key problems to be considered. Then we briefly characterize several improvement frameworks that help an organization address these people issues and key problems in a coherent and coordinated way. The Team Software Process (TSP) and Personal Software Process (PSP) address best practices for individuals and teams [Humphrey 1995, Humphrey 2002]. Capability Maturity Model® Integration (CMMI®) and the People CMM® address the broader organizational, management, and integration practices [Chrissis 2003, Curtis 2001].