2021/07/20 by Khalid Hasan, Partho Chakraborty, Hasan, Khalid +7 · 1 citation
Computer Science · #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Software Engineering (cs.SE) #Software Engineering Techniques and Practices
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2107.09587
openalex publication_date 2021/07/20 · openalex created_date 2022/07/25 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Background: Studies on developer productivity and well-being find that the\nperceptions of productivity in a software team can be a socio-technical\nproblem. Intuitively, problems and challenges can be better handled by managing\nexpectations in software teams. Aim: Our goal is to understand whether the\nexpectations of software developers vary towards diverse stakeholders in\nsoftware teams. Method: We surveyed 181 professional software developers to\nunderstand their expectations from five different stakeholders: (1)\norganizations, (2) managers, (3) peers, (4) new hires, and (5) government and\neducational institutions. The five stakeholders are determined by conducting\nsemi-formal interviews of software developers. We ask open-ended survey\nquestions and analyze the responses using open coding. Results: We observed 18\nmulti-faceted expectations types. While some expectations are more specific to\na stakeholder, other expectations are cross-cutting. For example, developers\nexpect work-benefits from their organizations, but expect the adoption of\nstandard software engineering (SE) practices from their organizations, peers,\nand new hires. Conclusion: Out of the 18 categories, three categories are\nrelated to career growth. This observation supports previous research that\nhappiness cannot be assured by simply offering more money or a promotion. Among\nthe most number of responses, we find expectations from educational\ninstitutions to offer relevant teaching and from governments to improve job\nstability, which indicate the increasingly important roles of these\norganizations to help software developers. This observation can be especially\ntrue during the COVID-19 pandemic.\n