I was brainstorming for some ideas to keep me busy the next few months (only got a gazillion ideas, currently prioritizing them :)), and I came up with an idea that I used for my first blogging experience… yep, it was still 2004, and I had this illusive idea to compare project people with animals… below the only entry that came out of that brainwave…

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Its time for a reader suggestion thread and todays question is:

What is the best way to motivate project team members?

I have talked enough for a moment. Now it's you who can have a go at this topic. Please place a comment with your tip to motivate team members; how do you excite your team?

EDIT: The following offer is not valid anymore, but feel free to add your two cents.
As a little incentive (bribe :)) I will give an ebook version of my book "Surprise! Now You're A Software Project Manager" to the most original entry (so make sure you include your email address in the comment box)…

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This week I run a short series on the behavior of individuals in general.

From a very high level perspective the behavior of a person is determined by

• who he is;
• how he is at the moment;
• what he wants, and
• what he thinks will happen.

What he wants

This is actually the 64 million dollar question: what do people want? Generally spoken, people will try to reach their goals, their desires, or try to avoid their fears come true. However, this can be so generic, to I will go one step back; peoples needs. The needs of humans is their ultimate goal that drives their actions.

People have physical or material needs, think about food, a roof above their heads, or may be some kind of transportation. Although once in a while I will come back to this needs, they will not be my main focus. I assume that in the context of software projects, people are not dying of hunger or are homeless.
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This week I run a short series on the behavior of individuals in general.

From a very high level perspective the behavior of a person is determined by

• who he is;
• how he is at the moment;
• what he wants, and
• what he thinks will happen.

How he is at the moment

If you ask someone the question "How are you doing?" you are inquiring about their current state, how they are feeling at this moment. How you are feeling has a big impact on the behavior you express. If you are feeling mellow, you will probably easy-going, where as you are stressed you probably react more intense then you normally would.

In Syed-Abdullah et al (2006) the researchers use a list of emotions and feelings to assess the current well-being of developers. By assigning a value to each of every entry in this list (e.g. 0=nothing, 10=maximal) we are able to describe the current state of well-being of a person.

The list they use is:

• Tense
• Miserable
• Depressed
• Optimistic
• Calm
• Relaxed
• Worried
• Enthusiastic
• Anxious
• Comfortable
• Gloomy
• Motivated

This week I will run a short series on the behavior of individuals in general.

From a very high level perspective the behavior of a person is determined by

• who he is;
• how he is at the moment;
• what he wants, and
• what he thinks will happen.

Who he is

I am not going to debate the existential question "who am I?". I am talking more about the matter-affect properties as "I am a 36 year old male living in The Netherlands." Your gender, your age and if you have kids or not have a great impact on how you do the things you do. Although these properties of an individual can be expressed in exact values (number, yes/no, male/female) there is also the more vague concept of personality. Most people would agree in this respect, and would even be able to express some characteristics like outgoing, closed and kind. But if you are trying to get some objectivity in this matter, you quickly get stranded.

Luckily for us, a lot of psychologists have dedicated their lives to this question, and provided us with some ideas. By creating categories of personality everyone can be assigned to a certain personality "value". This is not perfect, but it is sufficient for our discussion. I will use the most famous one, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. By answering some question a person can be assigned a certain Meyers-Briggs type, which gives a basic outline about your personality. People are scored against four dimensions (called "dichotomies"), and in every dimension you can only have one value.

The dimensions are (based upon Wikipedia):

• Introvert and Extravert; are you focused inward or outward.
• Sensing and Intuition; this dimension discusses the way you perceive information; a stronger tendency towards the present and using stuff you see (sensing), or more focuses on the future and let your gut guide you (intuition).
• Thinking and Feeling; discusses your tendency towards how you make decisions, more rational and calculated (thinking) or more emotional and subjective (feeling).
• Judging and Perceiving; when given a situation, do you approach this more with a predefine judgment, or is you approach more open minded, and are you just "consuming" the situation?

By assigning every score on a dimension a letter (indicated with bold), the indicator can be expressed by a 4-letter combination, having 16 possible combinations in total. Like I said, this approach has drawbacks, but at least it allows is to assign a value to the term "personality".