When developers at the seaside get too competitive, projects suffer from pier pressure.

At a recent London .NET users group meeting, Dr Neil Roodyn spoke about Extreme Programming. He mentioned the core values for this now include "Respect", and the people involved in a project should be considered before the methodology or technology.

I take the term "Respect" to mean that we should all work to ensure that every person or organisation involved with a project perceives they benefit from the project, and not selfishly to gain at the expense of others.

It is easy to assume that people are “like us” and want the same things. However, this is not the case and we should understand what everyone's individual motivations are. I think motivations can be divided into three areas, quality of life in the workplace, qualify of life outside the workplace and prospects for the future, and there are several things you need to understand in each of these areas.

Quality of life in the workplace

• Is the stakeholder working with people they like? (which may be different from people you like).
• Is the stakeholder using technologies and methodologies they enjoy using? (which may be different from technologies and methodologies you enjoy using).
• Does the stakeholder perceive the working environment to be pleasant to them? (we place different values of things like fast computers, comfortable chairs etc).

Quality of life outside the workplace

• Does the stakeholder have time for a high quality life outside the workplace (are working hours reasonable, do they need to spend a long time travelling, and do they have to work away from home?)
• Does the stakeholder have money for a high quality life outside the workplace

How will these change in future?

• Does the stakeholder have the opportunity to learn skills to develop their career in the way they want to (in some cases this will be to move into senior management, in others to learn technologies, but this is different in individual cases)?
• Does the stakeholder perceive their situation to be secure (the answer to this question may be different for someone with family commitments who cannot easily move to another area)?