Designing motivation strategies for software engineering teams: an empirical study

<u>Background.</u> Even though the amount of researches related to the behavior of software development teams has significantly increased in recent years, researches focusing on motivation as an alternative to lead software projects to success are still rare. <u>Objective/Method:</u> This article describes a survey conducted to identify the relative importance of some factors that affect the motivation of software engineers at work. The conceptual underpinnings of human motivation used in the research are the Expectancy Theory and the Motivation-Hygiene Theory. <u>Results/Conclusion:</u> In the study, a cross-sectional survey was conducted involving 176 software engineers employed at 20 software firms from the State of Pernambuco, Brazil. Data collected with the survey revealed not only the order in which the set of motivators influences the software engineers' motivation and other peripheral findings, but also served as a basis to design three motivation strategies for software engineering teams.