Going Beyond the Challenge! Investigating the motivations to Participate in Time-Bounded Software Development Events
Motivation, Corporate Hackathons, Game Jams.
Time-bounded events such as hackathons and game jams have become increasingly popular. Collaboration in these events is intensive, with teams working overnight to create a functional prototype over the course of one to three days. Despite the growth in popularity, little is understood about people's motivations to attend and participate in these events. In this thesis, We aim to understand why their participants have voluntarily participated in such events. For this, we present results from an interview study with participants of two hackathons and one large-scale survey with attendees of a global-scale game jam. In the first study, we report findings from an exploratory study in two hackathons organized by a big IT company. We identified four sets of motivational factors: technical, social, individual and business motivations. Technical motivations are associated with skill acquisition, while social motivations are related to the interaction between people during the event. Also, individual motivations are associated with a sense of autonomy and enjoyment of work. Finally, business motivations include the opportunity of publicizing work and the possibility of establishing partnerships. In the second study, we investigated again people's motivations to participate in such events and how their motivations differ according to their type and extent of involvement with game development. However, in this time we used a large-scale survey with attendees of a global-scale game jam. As a result, for example, indie developers are the ones most influenced by social motivations, while students and hobbyists favor the opportunity to strengthen technical skills more than other groups. In addition, the influence of social aspects in the motivation increases with the participant's level of education, while the influence of technical motivations decreases. As Implications for Theory, this thesis presents a conceptual framework that contributes to a broader understanding of the motivations for participating in Time-bounded events. In addition, our findings provide a set of organizational implications willing to engage people in their events. Finally, we also provide a discussion about implications for design that can be derived from the results of this research.