Using Self-Determination Theory (modern theory of motivation) to understand how to build motivation of the team.

1. Łukasz Gawlik
Manager of Software Development
Department in VSoft

2. Agile and team motivation based on Self-
Determination Theory
Using science to understand motivation

3. Deci’s experiment
prof. Edward Deci

4. How the two groups were treated
Day 1 Day 2 Day 3
Group A No reward Reward No reward
Group B No reward No reward No reward

5. Self-Determination Theory - Autonomous and
Controlled motivations

6. Controlled motivation has
a dark side

7. What about salary?

8. Basic psychological human needs: autonomy,
competence, relatedness

9. Autonomy is our need to be self-directed, it is
need to have influence on our life

10. Agile is focused on autonomy
•Self-organizing teams
•Planning meetings
•Retrospectives

11. Support for autonomy
•Ask open questions and
avoid closed questions
•Be moderator
•Offer choice within the structure and understand feelings

12. Competence - our skills and abilities match the
difficulty of the task

13. Agile is focused on competence
•Coding Dojo
•Coding Retreats
•One-to-One meetings

14. Support for competence
•Prize the process of improvement
•Criticize problems in process
of improvement
•Show the progress

15. Mindset Theory
Fixed and Grow mindset
prof. Carol Dweck

16. Relatedness - need to be a part of something
bigger, need to feel valuable for other people

17. Support for relatedness
•Show the context
•Show relations between
someone’s work and other people

18. Summary
•Carrot and stick work in short term
and have dark side
•Autonomous motivation is more valuable
•It can be build on autonomy, competence and relatedness
•Don’t manipulate, be honest

19. Thank you