The Emotional Roller Coaster of Responding to Requirements Changes in Software Engineering

We wanted to study how practitioners emotionally respond to requirements changes (RCs). Method: We conducted a world-wide survey with the participation of 201 software practitioners. In our survey, we used the Job-related Affective Well-being Scale (JAWS) and open-ended questions to capture participants’ emotions when handling RCs in their work and query about the different circumstances when they feel these emotions. We identified (1) emotional responses to RCs, i.e., the most common emotions felt by practitioners when handling RCs; (2) different stimuli – such as the RC, the practitioner, team, manager, customer – that trigger these emotions through their own different characteristics; (3) emotion dynamics , i.e., the changes in emotions during the RC handling life cycle; (4) RC stages where particular emotions are triggered; and (5) time related aspects that regulate the emotion dynamics.

• Kashumi Madampe
• Rashina Hoda
• John Grundy