Motive Metrics: A Jira Plug-In for Personality, Motivation and Performance Tracking

Requirements Engineering (RE) is an essential part of Software Engineering (SE). As RE activities rely heavily on people, it’s success is influenced by the human aspects of the team involved. In this research we develop a prototype application, called Motive Metrics, to improve RE activities by allowing managers to track developer’s personality and motivation and monitor their impact on developer performance and satisfaction.

The tool took form of an extension to Jira and was developed through rapid prototyping. The effectiveness and usability of the tool was evaluated by student teams split into managers and team members. Our user evaluation shows that the Motive Metrics prototype in its current state can functionally capture the above data and may assist managers in analysing team performance. However, developers’ comfort with sharing data with their managers shown varies greatly from one individual to another.

When evaluating Motive Metrics, 45.5% of participants rated 4 out of 5 for the application’s effectiveness in capturing personalities, but only 9.1% of participants rated 4 out of 5 for capturing motivations. Motive Metrics is likely ineffective in monitoring satisfaction and performance, as 45% of participants rated 1 out of 5 in comfortability of sharing their responses. Result also shows that Motive Metrics might not be beneficial in tracking the influence of motivation on the outcome but slightly more beneficial in tracking the influence of personality.

As a prototype, subsequent iterations could further improve our Jira plug-in’s effectiveness in human aspect capture. This can include addressing issues identified by participants and using a more relevant and holistic list of (de)motivators or, further, even reconsideration of an open-ended approach for capturing (de)motivators. With further development, the plugin has the potential to be a useful tool for industry professionals in understanding how their team’s personality and motivation impact their satisfaction and performance.

Saggar, A., Cao, A., Fan, J.X., Verma, J., Dave, K., Sharabinth, S., Hidellaarachchi, D., Grundy, J.C., Motive Metrics: A Jira Plug-In for Personality, Motivation and Performance Tracking, 2023 IEEE International Conference on Computers, Software and Applications (COMPSAC2023), Turin, Italy, 26-30 June 2023 -- Final publication available at DOI Author pre-published version PDF
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