Questions tagged [motivation]
This is for questions regarding improving motivation or handling motivation problems in the team. This tag also applies to motivation issues with project managers and other stakeholders. Avoid poll-type questions.
86
questions
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11
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How can I avoid team burnout?
I work for a small web company that deals with a lot of projects, a few at any given time are development heavy for us (400-1500 hours or more) and I've been noticing developers get extremely burnt ...
Shawn Dalma
29
votes
10
answers
981
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How can I get my team to value self-organization and self-improvement?
I'm working as a project leader in a team of 5 developers and myself and taking the role of analyst. Within the company, we've been applying the agile principles for several years.
Some of the ...
- 391
26
votes
8
answers
15k
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Toxic culture - I'm putting in more resources to help the project move faster, but people are slowing down
Background: I work in a company that has a bad culture: everybody has been treated the same: The same salary, no rewards for high achievers, and no punishment for bad employees, including people who ...
- 269
22
votes
12
answers
10k
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How to motivate a team when you have nothing to offer but equity?
I recently got into the whole startup scene, and I was hired as CTO for an early-stage startup. I've got a fair bit of engineering experience, but when it comes to management, I'd definitely be in the ...
- 331
19
votes
8
answers
5k
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Rewards or Penalties? Or just rewards?
What motivational mechanism works more effectively - penalties or rewards? I'm also interested to know whether penalties are used in modern software development teams. If they are - in what form?
ps. ...
- 7,050
19
votes
6
answers
4k
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What value do project managers provide a software development team?
What value does a project manager bring? How do they benefit the technical members of the team who do the work (e.g., the software developers)? Why should software developers prefer to have a ...
- 712
18
votes
7
answers
5k
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How to attract and motivate talented young people to work in our project?
I deal with the HR management and would like to ask what are the most effective attractors and motivators for young highly skilled people.
Some more details:
I am not project manager; I am head of ...
- 181
18
votes
3
answers
961
views
Motivating younger (Generation Y) members
I realize many articles have been written about generational differences in the workforce, but I'd like to know specific things you've done to help motivate younger team members.
I belong to "...
- 1,013
16
votes
7
answers
4k
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Handling unskilled / unmotivated team members
I am a project manager, for a major project at school. One of my team members had joined the team as a developer, without knowledge of particular languages. The member has spent almost half the ...
- 263
16
votes
12
answers
1k
views
Badges for project team members for motivation
Stack Exchange is using nice way to motivate contribution through Badges. I was thinking of implementing this same idea for my project team members. Badges will be awarded to project team members in ...
- 751
16
votes
8
answers
1k
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How to choose, motivate & develop a newbie programmer?
Imagine that you need to hire new programmer, however you are 100% sure that there are not experienced (what you need) developers on the local market and you need to work with newbies. A couple of ...
- 630
16
votes
6
answers
2k
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How to make better software developers out of less-than-average ones?
I've asked this before in other places, and I'm now turning to you guys to see what sort of advice you can offer.
Some background: I'm a project manager at an offshore company. I’m in no way the best ...
- 263
15
votes
5
answers
676
views
Better (financial) motivation for a developer: percentage or fixed salary?
Until now, I worked on projects with fixed salary, receiving it at each period (monthly). But I would like to know, what if the workers should receive their salary with a percentage of the project's ...
- 639
14
votes
7
answers
2k
views
How to get burned out team back engaged again?
You get the project and development team which is assigned to it recently finished one of those hard-core projects, where everyone is working overtime for long months just to end up being completely ...
- 19.9k
14
votes
8
answers
2k
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How to motivate my team members to start documenting their work
I just started a new job as a technical project manager. It's more or less my first experience, as I have just run teams of two students before, and now I am managing a project of 10 engineers, some ...
- 243
13
votes
4
answers
7k
views
How do you motivate people to work overtime to meet a deadline?
I have a deadline one week away, and we have set up pretty extensive expectations with the client. Should I talk to the client to try to manage the expectation? If they work overtime, do I have to ...
- 133
13
votes
5
answers
2k
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What is the best way to reward a small project team? (specially, at New Year event)
Let me explain a little about this "reward". I don't know if it is common everywhere, but companies in our country often offer some reward at the end of the year (Lunar New Year, or maybe Christmas). ...
- 798
13
votes
4
answers
391
views
How to manage and motivate external workers in project?
In one of projects I work we have some people working only partially. They come to work only when there is a need for their work in project and sometimes they work at home.
The problem is with ...
- 779
12
votes
7
answers
2k
views
How could I motivate my project team members to be self-motivated?
Some team members are self-motivated however some others is not. Non self-motivated members is slowing down the velocity of the project which cause frustration to the other members and to management.
...
- 751
12
votes
5
answers
5k
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How to manage a team member when he is serving the notice period
The notice period in our company is one month. One of my team members has quit and he is serving his one month notice period. However, it is getting difficult to get any work done from his side.
Do ...
- 223
12
votes
6
answers
912
views
What techniques or frameworks help with influencing organizational change?
There's change that starts at the grassroots level, where the people who hold the vision for change don't have the authority to just make it happen. What can help?
Even if the person with the vision ...
- 163
11
votes
9
answers
633
views
How can I reward hard work without a budget to do so?
A similar question discusses cash, presents, and parties as good ways to reward project participants after successful completion of a project.
On smaller projects without a budget, and with ...
- 2,955
11
votes
6
answers
1k
views
Team Management by Metrics
Metrics are valuable tools to measure performance and to manage projects/people. Nevertheless, I have started to encounter certain issues with regards to the measurement of my team's performance.
...
- 2,768
11
votes
2
answers
875
views
Remote start up company software development
I'm handling a team of 6
2 Software Engineers
1 Software Architect
2 Creative Artists
1 System Administrator
for a remote start up company, what could be the best project management and software ...
- 263
10
votes
1
answer
984
views
How to improve the team-work?
Recently our team was informed that they will be joined to another team.
We work in a big system and there are several subsystems that demand specific competencies, currently we have:
Team-A --> ...
- 2,141
10
votes
3
answers
605
views
Project gamification - is it worth a try? [closed]
I consider introducing some gaming elements to a project. The team does Scrum and it would be nice to add some more motivation, so I was thinking about set of rewards which would favor teamwork and ...
- 2,130
9
votes
2
answers
872
views
Introducing fun at work for Software Engineering team
As a manager of a 20 member software engineering team, I would like to introduce some fun element at work. This is mostly to bring in a good team synergy, fun, motivation and cross communication in a ...
- 395
9
votes
3
answers
1k
views
Do you know any companies that rotate developers between different projects on regular basis?
I work for a smallish outsourcing company of about 30 people, nearly all of them developers. At any given moment we have 6-9 projects in development for various clients. Most of the projects are ...
- 191
9
votes
3
answers
296
views
How to mix innovation time with project time?
I am attempting to get a proposal going where some time is set aside for innovation, similar to the well known free time at Google, but I fear that one of the biggest argument will be that it will ...
- 475
7
votes
4
answers
538
views
how to integrate millennials into an existing working environment without firing them and keeping the old employees as well?
My question is related to groups, motivation and millennials - aka generation y. I had a colleague who was a real millennial: he was really driven, he was always looking for new challenges, and was ...
- 11.9k
7
votes
6
answers
1k
views
How shall we deal with demotivation from non-core activities?
Situations where the members of the project team have tasks which are not directly related to their job positions happens quite often (especially in cross-functional teams).
According to my ...
- 5,311
7
votes
3
answers
507
views
What are good ways to stimulate and encourage yourself as Project Manager or Project Leader?
I have the impression that people (including myself, I'm not going to be ignorant) have the nature of locking themselves up if they have an 'off day'. It's a lacking of inspiration, stimulation and ...
- 2,752
7
votes
3
answers
283
views
How do you implement ideas from Peopleware in an early startup?
Peopleware suggests that managers should set realistic schedules and should not put overreaching pressures on developers. In an early startup with hired developers, how does one keep the competitive ...
samxli
7
votes
3
answers
449
views
How should I get work from someone who "Talks a good game" but won't deliver?
Background: I worked for an organisation that delivered services to a number of public sector clients, geographically dispersed. A series of security-related changes were required to allow one such ...
- 6,858
6
votes
6
answers
732
views
Are there any wrong methods when selecting a team?
When selecting a team do you think it’s beneficial to use information collated from exercises such as Honey & Mumford – Learning Style Questionnaires?
Furthermore, would you encourage team/...
- 213
6
votes
2
answers
1k
views
What are some ways to improve team motivation and sense of achievement using Kanban?
I manage a development team using Scrum extremely successfully. When I started there was no organization to development, so we implemented Kanban as a stepping stone to provide visibility into the ...
- 889
5
votes
4
answers
648
views
How to encourage people to use a physical board?
Recently, we introduced a physical board to visualise work progress in one of our projects. In the first few iteration the team was very excited about it and used the board very often. We saw true ...
- 1,043
5
votes
5
answers
838
views
How to engage new stakeholders into project?
I've recently started a new project. Requirements were set, project was already specified and no new revolutionary 'features' can be added. Although on the client side, person responsible for project ...
- 779
5
votes
4
answers
1k
views
How do I increase morale of a team member?
A team member no longer feels their contribution makes an impact on the overall company. How should I motivate this person?
- 681
5
votes
7
answers
2k
views
How "pushy" should a PM be?
Most PMs are driven by results, and that is probably a good thing, most of the time. However, I have a colleague who has become utterly focused on delivery, and won't accept any answer that she doesn'...
- 6,858
5
votes
4
answers
447
views
How to manage a developer with poor work ethics
Background:
I am the PM / Scrum master in a development team, we follow a semi-agile framework for app development. The team (which is newly formed) consists of 3 developers. I am not the line ...
- 440
5
votes
4
answers
946
views
Management by Walking Around (with a remote team)
Management by Walking Around (or Wandering About) is an extraordinarily effective (yet simple) way to keep your finger on the pulse of your team, to build relationships, and hear about problems and ...
- 2,955
5
votes
3
answers
1k
views
Team focus during corporate restructuring
How would you manage/lead a project team during a reorganisation of the company. The project itself has nothing to do with the reorg, but the people are affected: some change departments, some are ...
- 5,252
5
votes
3
answers
392
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Project Management in bad times - demoralized people and loss of power
I'm a Software Project Manager currently facing a hard situation: our company is having some hard times (mainly due to financial things) and lately people are generally pessimistic, apathic and/or ...
- 451
4
votes
4
answers
1k
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How to motivate a team? (software development OOP year 1 degree project)
I'm currently in college, working as part of at team for one of the CA projects.
it's a problem based learning project where we've been given a trigger and told to come up with something to represent ...
- 185
4
votes
5
answers
3k
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Qualities of a Team Lead
May I know some points to keep in mind while playing as a Team Lead in a Software Company? What should make me a good leader from the point of Technology, Management skills, Personal behavior etc
- 149
4
votes
3
answers
254
views
Earning Respect of Team Members When I Know Very Little About the Topic?
I've recently been assigned project manager of a project which requires moderate-high degree of technical skills in machine learning that are above my level. Originally a programmer, I have previously ...
- 223
4
votes
3
answers
246
views
When is it appropriate to provide non-monetary rewards to government employees that do not directly work for you?
When your client is the government, and you are managing a mixed team of your own with government employees, when is it appropriate to provide non-monetary rewards (such as dinners or gift ...
- 1,560
4
votes
2
answers
304
views
How to improve team motivation with minimal wage increment but fair performance ratings?
How would you motivate the team when the annual wage increment is minimal (less than 5%) even though the performance ratings are very fair?
- 235
4
votes
4
answers
778
views
What we should do, if after planning we still have some free time in Sprint (i.e. unused forecasted capacity) and no tasks that will fit in it
A question about Sprint planning. Let's assume, that Team velocity are 20 Story Point (SP). The most prior Stories in Product Backlog are A (12 SP), B (5 SP) and C (4 SP).
It's easy to see, that if ...
- 5,311