Developer momentum theory explains progress in software development tasks
Theory of Developer Momentum: The Developer's Experience of Progress and the Craft of Maintaining Motion
Software Engineering
Summary
Software developers often feel like they are making progress as they work, but this feeling can be hard to understand or describe. The authors created a theory called Developer Momentum to explain how developers experience moving forward on their tasks. They show that this feeling comes from building up knowledge, focusing intensely on problems, and gaining clarity through ongoing work. This theory helps distinguish progress from things like motivation or a flow state and can help understand how developers work with new AI tools.
What this means in practice
- •For software engineering teams: Design processes and tools that support developers’ experience of progress by recognizing the stages of building working context and clarity in tasks.
- •For ai interaction designers: Create AI-assisted development workflows that enhance developer momentum by helping maintain cognitive immersion and clarity during coding.
A theory result. No direct application yet.
Authors
Arty Starr, Keith Mann, Margaret-Anne Storey
Abstract
This paper introduces a Theory of Developer Momentum that helps us see the activity of developing software in motion and the skilled craft through which progress unfolds. We define Developer Momentum as the developer's experience of progress and forward motion toward the goal of a task. Our theory disentangles the related constructs of flow state, momentum, and motivation, so we can more clearly see the relationships between them and how they interweave to support progress. In order to make progress, developers build up working context in memory, become immersed in a cognitive puzzle, and gain clarity through motion in uncertain terrain. The theory provides researchers with a rich experiential lens to investigate how developers' cognitive experiences are shifting in emerging AI workflows. Building on prior grounded theory work, we conducted in-depth interviews with a theoretically sampled subset of 12 professional developers, and eight feedback interviews to evaluate resonance and investigate how the theory translates to agentic AI workflows. We followed a Constructivist Grounded Theory approach to construct a theory grounded in empirical data. Our theory contributes a novel paradigm for seeing the motion of developing software at multiple scales and resolutions, seeing the living capacities that support this motion, and expanding what becomes available for improvement, skilled judgment, and craft.