Opinion Analysis of Software Developers Working Onsite on Public Sector Software Projects: An Exploratory Study

Year 2019, Volume: 7 Issue: 4, 391 - 398, 30.10.2019

Doğancan Köseoğlu Oumout Chouseinoglou

https://doi.org/10.17694/bajece.517419

Abstract

Among critical stakeholders of software projects
developed in public institutions are software developers and project managers
affiliated to sub-contractor companies, who are working onsite at the public
institutions. The aim of this study is to determine the effect of working onsite
in public software projects for software developers and managers with respect
to selected factors. The research is designed as an exploratory and qualitative
study. The study participants were 10 software developers, one technical team
leader and four project managers, all having long experiences in working on
public software projects on client premises. Semi-structured interview
technique is employed as the data collection method and “ analysis” was
applied on the obtained participant responses. Following this analysis, “key
” approach was used to identify the issues to be further considered. It
has been determined that the productivity of software developers working onsite
at public institutions is low due to intense requests, shortened time to
fulfill these requests, and long duration of authorization processes. Moreover,
a finding of the study is that the quality of the developed projects and the motivation
of the developers are considered to be low for the same aforementioned reasons.
Among the foremost causes for these results are the fact that employees work
under two different hierarchical structures one in the public institution and
one in the software company, more than one managers assign work and there is an
authority confusion between organizational units and people in the public institutions.

Keywords

Content analysis, Exploratory study, Onsite employment, Public sector software projects, Software developer motivation

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