An empirical study of decision making, participation, and empowerment in Norwegian software development organisations

Abstract

With the growth of agile software development methods we have seen an increased focus on the empowerment of software developers as a means to improving productivity and quality in software development. From other knowledge-intensive industries we also see that participation in decision making is argued to improve not only business, but also workers' job satisfaction. In this study, interviews from four different types of software development organisations in Norway are collected and analysed to get more insight in how decisions are made in software development. The four types of organisations are a) Small, in-house software teams, b) Software company with undefined development process, c) Software company using unified process, and d) Software company using scrum. The data confirm that experience is a dimension that significantly influences a developer's empowerment. But there is also clear differences between these four groups in what kind of decisions developers are participating in, and what level of participation they are admitted. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.