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, the success of RE 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 developers’ personality and motivation and monitor their impact on developer performance and satisfaction. The tool takes the form of an extension to Jira and was developed through rapid prototyping. The effectiveness and usability of the tool were evaluated by student teams split into managers and team members. 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 comfort in sharing their responses. Our evaluation results also show 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 on RE task performance.