In software engineering, technical documentation is one of the activities that play
an important role for the success of software projects. When developing software
systems a lot of time is spent not only implementing your own solutions into the
code but also understanding and maintaining the code solution produced by others.
However with an emerging agile community the priority and engagement in documentation
may stagnate and effort invested into those activities may to some extent
be considered inherently wasteful. Therefore, the current perception for many software
engineers may be that technical documentation is incomplete and not updated.
An important aspect of the issue of producing documentation is the motivation of
the developers who are responsible for its completion. A question that might be
asked is if documentation overall is an activity that the software community would
be better off without, or if it is a neglected activity with room for improvement.
For that reason this exploratory multiple case study aims to identify some of the
issues to shed some light on why technical documentation has got into such an unfavourable
position in the software industry. The study investigate the motivation
affecting software engineers when producing software documentation, how this motivation
evolves over time and why there is a difference compared to other activities
in the software industry.
The study consider prospect theory as an explanatory theory for how improvements
in outcomes are perceived in terms of value. In addition this study also analyses
how experiences are remembered and evaluated, as it relates to how excitement is
considered for similar tasks in the future. The study can affirm that software engineers’
motivation seems to be affected by excitement and value dimensions when
it comes to producing technical documentation. Additionally, in the long term, receiving
constructive feedback can improve the excitement and the perceived value
of writing technical documentation.
The study finally observes that developers to a higher extent seem intrinsically
motivated by the coding activity than the documentation activity, which the study
points out as a primary enabler for the difference in behaviour between the coding
and documentation activity.
