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, low-quality SD-related artifacts, 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 two-year research project (started in September 2023) whose overarching goal is to customize a well-known and validated group-based intervention program, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), in the context of SD-related tasks and assess, in the short- and long-range, whether it helps developers to improve their well-being and performance, as well as the quality of the SD-related artifacts they produce.
MOOD is funded by the Italian Ministry for Universities and Research (MUR) through the Research Projects of Significant National Interest (PRIN) program.
It is expected to have a positive impact at different levels: (1) at a worker level, by promoting developers' well-being (e.g., by reducing stress); (2) at an organizational level, by improving developers' performance and quality of software-related artifacts, and reducing developers' turnover; and (3) at a societal level, by reducing the indirect cost caused by poor well-being at work (e.g., developers experiencing burnout).
University of Salerno (Department of Computer Science), Fisciano, SA, Italy:
Simone Romano (Principal Investigator of the Project)
Giuseppe Scanniello
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
University of Trento (Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science), Trento, TN, Italy:
Alessandro Marchetto (Principal Investigator of the Reseach Unit)
Paolo Giorgini
Romano S., Conforti A., Guidetti G., Viotti S., Converso D., & Scanniello G. (2024). On Job Demands and Resources in the Italian Software Industry: Initial Insights from a Qualitative Study. In 2024 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME) (under review). Pre-print: https://drive.google.com/file/d/14Sf0P0XDD4dUPL_bGhQ1pFEzq1MD3y6T/view?usp=drive_link
Romano S., Scanniello G., Baldassarre M. T., Caivano D., & Tortora G. (2023). On Fixing Bugs: Do Personality Traits Matter? In International Conference on Product-Focused Software Process Improvement (pp. 451-467). Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-49266-2_31. Pre-print: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jyBLJa6ED2K8CmWCvJoR-xNWrjtBcRxk/view?usp=drive_link