The Effect of Work Environments on Productivity and Satisfaction of Software Engineers

Individual Sustainability

Authors: Brittany Johnson, Thomas Zimmermann and Christian Bird

Year: 2021

Published in: IEEE Transactions On Software Engineering.

Read me: DOI: 10.1109/TSE.2019.2903053. 👩‍💻Replication package.

Abstract: The physical work environment of software engineers can have various effects on their satisfaction and the ability to get the work done. To better understand the factors of the environment that affect productivity and satisfaction of software engineers, we explored different work environments at Microsoft. We used a mixed-methods, multiple stage research design with a total of 1,159 participants: two surveys with 297 and 843 responses respectively and interviews with 19 employees. We found several factors that were considered as important for work environments: personalization, social norms and signals, room composition and atmosphere, work-related environment affordances, work area and furniture, and productivity strategies. We built statistical models for satisfaction with the work environment and perceived productivity of software engineers and compared them to models for employees in the Program Management, IT Operations, Marketing, and Business Program & Operations disciplines. In the satisfaction models, the ability to work privately with no interruptions and the ability to communicate with the team and leads were important factors among all disciplines. In the productivity models, the overall satisfaction with the work environment and the ability to work privately with no interruptions were important factors among all disciplines. For software engineers, another important factor for perceived productivity was the ability to communicate with the team and leads. We found that private offices were linked to higher perceived productivity across all disciplines.

Bibtex (copy):

@article{johnson2019effect,
    doi = {10.1109/TSE.2019.2903053},
    url = {https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-021-10027-z},
    year = {2019},
    publisher = {IEEE},
    volume = {47},
    number = {4},
    author = {Johnson, Brittany and Zimmermann, Thomas and Bird, Christian},
    title = {The effect of work environments on productivity and satisfaction of software engineers},
    journal = {IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering}
}

Annotation

By Wander Siemers, Abel van Steenweghen, Florentin Arsene. 🪧Slides.

This paper investigates the effect of physical work environments on the productivity and satisfaction of software engineers. While research has already been done in the field of work environments and productivity for office workers, it is not known the extent to which the current findings apply to software engineers. Software engineering is a rapidly changing field: developers collaborate across the globe in order to continuously develop and integrate their work in large codebases.

This research has been conducted through two surveys, of 297 and 743 responses, and an interview of 19 participants. The main aspects of work environments were found to be personalization, social norms and signals, room composition and atmosphere, work-related affordances, work area and furniture, and productivity strategies, some of which were considered important for all the types of office workers. However, for software engineers in particular, some factors were considered of higher importance: proximity to windows, decoration, social norms and the ability to both communicate with the team and work privately without interruption.

The main limitation of this paper is that causal inference cannot be proven during the study setup. The interviewed subjects were selected from a single company, Microsoft, from one geographical area only. We cannot be certain that there was no external factor, specific to Microsoft only, that caused some of the findings. In the end, this study is reproducible and it should be performed at other companies to improve its generalizability and credibility.

– 📖 –