Scrum anyone? Well, not this kind — think agile software development. Could it help get your team motivated, and get things done? Image: rabinal/Flickr

Managing people and processes isn’t all that different from designing a product. Let me explain. In all cases, you have one common goal, which is to motivate action toward a desired outcome. The specific mechanisms you might use will vary depending on whether you’re designing a task or a tangible product, but the underlying psychology does not.

A particular process that does a good job drawing on principles of motivational psychology and is relevant to people who develop technology products is Agile project management. Agile is a flexible way to complete complex projects with a team; it leverages relationships to maximize the quality of the final product. After being trained in the method by Menlo Innovations in Ann Arbor, MI, I had the experience to see it (or at least, our version of it) in action, and see firsthand how it motivates individual contributions to software development.

If you are working on a piece of software using an Agile method, your work will be broken into time delimited “sprints.” Let’s say they’re two weeks long for the purpose of this example. Your initial set of product requirements will be broken into “epics,” or major pieces of functionality. Then each epic will be further broken down into “stories,” each of which has an attached estimate of time to complete and the resources needed to complete it. The sprint is plotted by fitting the highest priority stories into the schedule.

Every day, the team working on the stories meets in a “scrum” and discusses progress over the last 24 hours. Typically there is also a physical board or other display where stories can be moved depending on their status, giving all team members full visibility into the various tasks. At the end of the sprint, the team does a show-and-tell of their progress, which should be fully functioning (albeit likely to be missing quite a bit of functionality, particularly in the earliest sprints).

The customer provides feedback, and the remaining stories and epics in the “backlog” may be rewritten or reprioritized accordingly. (Please note that this description is based on our experiences with Agile at Wellness Prevention; others may implement Agile with slightly different twists.) This method allows a development team to respond quickly and efficiently to feedback, and offers a customer multiple opportunities to shape the final product to their desires.

How does this all connect to the psychology of motivation? Well, Agile methods do a particularly good job of supporting the autonomy, competence, and relatedness of the project team members. And we know that supporting autonomy, competence, and relatedness helps to motivate people.

Consider:

• Autonomy: Each team member has input into how the epics translate to stories, how long a story should take to complete, and which stories to tackle in which order. During the sprint, each team member also has some choice as to which stories to complete first, understanding, of course, that dependencies and customer needs may drive some of those decisions too. And, the scrums provide team members with an opportunity to raise questions and problems, essentially empowering them to remove obstacles to task completion more efficiently.
• Competence: The Agile method is rife with feedback opportunities. At the daily scrum, the team sees a visual representation of progress as stories are moved along the Agile board. Developers also hear how they can support their teammates by finishing particular tasks or helping to solve a problem. And, people learn right away if they are creating a roadblock by not completing a story in a timely fashion. The customer show-and-tells are another powerful source of feedback. In our experience, while these were difficult at first, we quickly learned that the sting of immediate negative feedback was well worth it for the improvements in quality and accuracy of the final product. It was also very satisfying to hear right away when we’d met or exceeded expectations on a particular product feature.
• Relatedness: Although software development often requires a wide range of skill sets — front- and back-end engineers, quality assurance, designers, content developers, project managers, database administrators, and so on — the actual work can feel fairly solitary. With an Agile process, the complete team gathers daily and has a clear view as to how their individual tasks connect to the larger whole. At the same time, the scrums themselves are a social interaction and help solidify a sense of team unity.

Designing a great product is important, but remember too that behind great products stand great teams. Think about the process you use to organize and reward their work, and how you can build in the psychology of motivation to produce the best results. You might be surprised by how much your process and your product have in common.

Amy Bucher is a psychologist who focuses on designing programs that help people live healthier and happier lives by changing their behaviors. She is Associate Director of Behavioral Science for Wellness Prevention, Inc., a Johnson Johnson Company.

Amy Bucher