[Paper Review] Pandemic Programming: How COVID-19 affects software developers and how their organizations can help

Paul Ralph, Sebastian Baltes+15 more|PubMed|May 3, 2020

Supply Chain Resilience and Risk Management53 references37 citations

TL;DR

The study surveys software developers to quantify how COVID-19-induced work-from-home affected wellbeing and productivity, and identifies organizational actions to support affected employees.

ABSTRACT

To improve employee productivity, software companies should focus on maximizing employee wellbeing and improving the ergonomics of employees' home offices. Women, parents and disabled persons may require extra support.

Motivation & Objective

• Assess the impact of COVID-19 on software developers' emotional wellbeing and perceived productivity when switching to work-from-home.
• Develop and validate a theoretical model linking wellbeing, productivity, disaster preparedness, fear, and home-office ergonomics.
• Identify demographic groups that may be disproportionately affected and explore tailored support needs.
• Provide actionable organizational recommendations to enhance wellbeing and productivity during crises.

Proposed method

• Design and administer an anonymous, multilingual questionnaire incorporating validated scales (WHO-5 for wellbeing, HPQ for productivity, disaster preparedness, Fear and Resilience, ergonomics, and organizational support concepts).
• Collect data from 2225 usable responses across 53 countries using translations into 12 languages.
• Apply non-parametric inferential statistics and structural equation modeling to test the hypothesized relationships.
• Perform exploratory analyses to identify differential impacts by gender, parental status, and disability status.
• Conduct PCA/confirmatory factor analysis to validate constructs and assess convergent/discriminant validity.

Experimental results

Research questions

• RQ1 How does working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic affect software developers' emotional wellbeing?
• RQ2 How does the pandemic-driven shift to home work influence perceived productivity among software professionals?
• RQ3 What are the relationships among disaster preparedness, fear, ergonomics, wellbeing, and productivity in this context?
• RQ4 Which groups (e.g., women, parents, disabled individuals) are differently affected and what supports do they require?

Key findings

• COVID-19 work-from-home has a negative effect on both wellbeing and perceived productivity among software developers.
• Wellbeing and productivity are closely related and influence each other.
• Disaster preparedness, fear related to the pandemic, and home-office ergonomics significantly affect wellbeing or productivity.
• Exploratory analyses suggest women, parents, and people with disabilities may be disproportionately affected and may require targeted support.