Practice What
You Teach

Exploring Motivation And Its Role For
(Teaching) Agile Software Development

XP 2022, 17th June

Frank Schimmel
Code & Context
Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering Science

Self-Determination Theory

Amotivation

Extrinsic Motivation Conviction

Intrinsic Motivation

I just cannot be bothered to get up...

I do the thing because of something else.

The thing that I do is fun! Therefore, I do it.

Visualisation courtesy of Maren Baermann

Basic Psychological Needs

Autonomy Competence Relatedness

High degree of satisfaction, high degree of conviction.

Autonomy

Empowerment

Enablement

Competence

Personal Growth & Self-efficacy

Relatedness

Meaningful Relationships

& Purpose

Self-Determination Theory

Amotivation

Extrinsic Motivation Conviction

Autonomous Motivation

Intrinsic Motivation

I do the thing because of something else...

... and the reason is inside of myself.

Visualisation courtesy of Maren Baermann

Hypothesis 1

⇒

Autonomy

Competence

Relatedness

So, the idea is to use agile s/w dev principles to foster basic psychological need satisfaction.

What would be a better subject to try this than ... agile s/w dev?

As it happens, I teach agile software development ...

... 2-week course, 6 hours contact per day, 4 days a week ...

and I make my students

* work in teams & define way of working & expectations: opportunity to experience relatedness & autonomy
                        * build a shared understanding of a domain with a customer (me)
                          <br>establish a common goal that we strive for together: opportunity to experience relatedness
                        * deliver working software frequently: opportunity to experience competence
                        * reflect and improve their process: opportunity to experience all of it

... shouldn't I be seeing something there?

You can actually measure the BPNs, see https://selfdeterminationtheory.org/

Some Results

Box plot of the basic psychological need satisfaction at the beginning of the course

Some Results

Box plot of the basic psychological need satisfaction at the beginning of the course

Thank You!

Frank Schimmel

@aspargillus

Frank Schimmel
Code & Context
Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering Science

Practice What You Teach

Self-Determination Theory

Basic Psychological Needs

Autonomy

Competence

Relatedness

Self-Determination Theory

Hypothesis 1

Some Results

Some Results

Practice What
You Teach