Re: (OT) Motivating the Unmotivated Programmer

[Rich36]

Apart from motivation, one of the issues this brings up is quality control. Setting standards for production code forces the programmer to work within those boundaries. Make the release of the software conditional on meeting a set of criteria about the quality of the software and how the software is released. This not only benefits the programmer who's having problems, but the entire group.

In working in release management, I've found that when you give developers a specific set of instructions regarding a process, explain why the steps are important, and make their production releases contingent on meeting certain criteria, quality goes up. This is something that you have to have management behind you for, and something that the developers have to understand fully. In a working situation, I think it's far easier to change behaviors than attitude. If you can show the quality process as a positive thing and beneficial to them and the company, their attitude about the tasks will become more positive.

Rich36

---

There's more than one way to screw it up...

---