Understanding Software Engineers’ Skill Development in Software Development

ABSTRACT

Organizations increasingly use virtual teams to support their business processes. With software development as its context, this study aims to examine how software engineers are motivated to work in virtual teams, as well as the subsequent impacts this has on their programming and collaboration skills development. A theoretical model was developed based on self-determination theory. Data were collected from longitudinal surveys taken by software engineers in China. Our research results show that trust is positively related to software engineers’ autonomous motivation, whereas social influence is positively related to their controlled motivation. Besides, autonomous motivation enhances the amount of effort software engineers put into programming, whereas controlled motivation does not. Programming effort, in turn, increases their programming and collaboration skills. These research findings can advance our understanding about software engineers’ motivations in the context of software development. Our work also has important implications for organizations and software engineers.

KEYWORDS:

• Software engineer
• motivation
• task effort
• programming skill
• collaboration skill
• trust
• social influence

Additional information

Funding

This research is supported by the internal grant from Dongbei University of Finance and Economics.