The Shape of Code

If people were not motivated to write software, computers would not have anything to do. What motivates a person to write software?

The source of human motivation may be intrinsic, as when pleasure is derived from performing the activity, or it may be extrinsic, such as being paid.

For some developers, writing software is a hedonistic activity. Intrinsic motivation continues to be the attractive force behind very many Open source projects.

People have to make a living, and being paid to write software creates an extrinsic motivation.

What do we know about human motivation?

The 1943 paper A Theory of Human Motivation introduced Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which is now often used as a structure for thinking about motivation. The image below, from Wikipedia, shows Maslow’s hierarchy:

Managers have long known that various kinds of carrots & sticks can be used to incentivize people to behave in a particular way, i.e., applying extrinsic motivation.

Incentives are actively researched in business and marketing departments. Unfortunately, sometimes more fashionable topics, such as cognitive biases, divert researcher’s interest.

Despite its fundamental importance, developer motivation is rarely considered, let alone a subject of research, within computing departments.

As purveyors of intangible goods, the software industry is aware of many issues around motivation. Managers of software teams appreciate the impact of team motivation on performance. Team motivation is a perennial topic of discussion for the Agile coaches and Scrum masters I meet. Companies selling products offering an API hire developer evangelists, whose job is to motivate third-party developers to use this API.

Software systems that continue to be used become part of the fabric of larger, more complex, systems. The motivations of the inhabitants of complex systems can have many unintended consequences.

Motivation is an intangible that cannot be measured directly; its effect has to be inferred from the results produced by the behaviors it drives. Distinguishing between two diametrically different motivations can present a conundrum, e.g., distinguishing between developers following Parkinson’s law or striving to meet a deadline.

Books don’t usually have much to say about the human side of software product management. A well-known exception is Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams.

My evidence-based software engineering book should have had a chapter devoted to motivation, but given its focus on publicly available data, I had to make do with several 1-page subsections.