Motivation for Self-Assignment: Factors Agile Software Developers Consider

Self-assignment is a fundamental to self-organizing teams, however, the factors that motivate agile developers to self-assign tasks are not known. In a pilot study of a software organization in India, we conducted interviews with 12 agile developers. Using descriptive statistical and thematic analysis, we identified three groups of factors motivating the self-assignment: task-based, developer-based, and opinion-based factors. We found that agile developers give precedence to task-based and developer-based factors over opinion-based factors. Furthermore, majority of the participants preferred to self-assign tasks that give them an opportunity to learn new technology, tools, and domains. This knowledge can be applied to let team members better select tasks of their interest and to conduct future studies into this topic.