MOOD

Peopleware, which includes anything related to the role of people in Software Development (SD), has been arousing an increasing interest from both the software industry and the research community. This interest is due to the current economic system that demands high-quality software products with a short time to market, staying on the budget. This exposes software developers to the risk of experiencing stress, burnout, and reduced motivation, leading, in turn, to reduced job performance and increased turnover. Mindfulness represents a promising intervention that might let developers do their best at work, limiting or even preventing the previously mentioned negative outcomes. 

MOOD (Mindfulness fOr sOftware Developers) is a research project (started in September 2023 and ended in February 2025) whose overarching goal was to tailor a validated group-based intervention program based on mindfulness—i.e., Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)—to software developers and then assess, in the short- and long-range, whether it helps developers to improve their wellbeing (e.g., by reducing their stress levels) and job performance.

MOOD (Project ID: D53D23008880006) was funded by the European Union - Next Generation EU, Mission 4, Component 1, under the Research Projects of Significant National Interest (PRIN) program of the Italian Ministry of Universities and Research.

The MOOD project has successfully achieved its overarching goal of tailoring the MBSR protocol to software developers and rigorously evaluating its effects on their job performance and well-being. Conducted in collaboration with two multinational corporations operating in the Italian software industry, the project has demonstrated that meditation-based interventions, such as MBSR, can yield improvements in both developers' job performance and well-being, with effects retained over time. MOOD's findings provide a solid foundation for recommending meditation-based interventions as a valuable job resource for software developers. The project has produced several peer-reviewed publications, with further ones forthcoming, and has laid the groundwork for a future research agenda on meditation-based interventions in the software development context. 

• University of Salerno (Department of Computer Science), Fisciano, SA, Italy:

  • Simone Romano (Principal Investigator of the Project)

  • Giuseppe Scanniello

  • Giovanna Stornaiuolo

• University of Turin (Department of Psychology), Turin, TO, Italy:

  • Sara Viotti (Principal Investigator of the Reseach Unit)

  • Gloria Guidetti

  • Daniela Converso

  • Alberto Conforti

  • Giulia Bacci

  • Federica Bosio

• University of Trento (Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science), Trento, TN, Italy:

  • Alessandro Marchetto (Principal Investigator of the Reseach Unit)

  • Paolo Giorgini

1. Romano S., Stornaiuolo G., Scanniello G. (2026), Meditation-Based Interventions for Software Developers: A Systematic Literature Review on Well-being and Performance, Proceedings of the 30th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering (EASE 2026), ACM, pp. (not yet available).

2. Romano S., Conforti A., Guidetti G., Viotti S., Ceschin R., Scanniello G. (2025), MBSR at Work: Perspectives from an Instructor and Software Developers, Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering (EASE '25), ACM, pp. 814–817. DOI: 10.1145/3756681.3757006. Pre-print: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aVZel9VhUWz2KQRVJ8gDpcegdGLnFipf/view?usp=sharing. 

3. Romano S., Sferratore F. P., Scanniello G. (2025), Further Evidence on a Controversial Topic about Human-Based Experiments: Professionals vs. Students. Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering (EASE '25). ACM, 678–683. DOI: 10.1145/3756681.3757019. Pre-print: https://drive.google.com/file/d/17OEvZOLm_ulitprb2Si8qhWxQahw1VP6/view?usp=sharing. 

4. Romano S.,  Conforti A., Guidetti G., Viotti S., Converso D., & Scanniello G. (2024). On Job Demands and Resources in the Italian Software Industry, Product-Focused Software Process Improvement (PROFES 2024), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 15452, Springer, pp. 172–188.  DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-78386-9_12 . Pre-print: https://drive.google.com/file/d/14Sf0P0XDD4dUPL_bGhQ1pFEzq1MD3y6T/view?usp=sharing. 

5. Romano S., Scanniello G., Marchetto A., Giorgini P., Guidetti G., Converso D., Viotti S. (2024), MOOD: Mindfulness fOr sOftware Developers, Proceedings of the 18th ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM '24), ACM, pp. 598–602. DOI: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3674805.3695392. Pre-print: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MTSCvJG3rE9KV7nkA5JfDluml8i1pghQ/view?usp=sharing. 

6. Romano S., Scanniello G., Baldassarre M. T., Caivano D., & Tortora G. (2023). On Fixing Bugs: Do Personality Traits Matter?, Product-Focused Software Process Improvement (PROFES 2023). Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14483. Springer, pp. 451–467. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-49266-2_31. Pre-print: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1McqIY5S-xZT4zZpnJdmFPhYRp800P3n1/view?usp=sharing.