  Distributed development involving globally distributed teams in different
countries and timezones adds additional complexity into an already complex
undertaking. This paper focuses on the effect of global software development on
motivation. Specifically, we ask, what impact does misalignment between needed
and actual autonomy have on global team motivation? We studied members of two
distributed software development teams with different degrees of distribution,
both following the Scrum approach to software development. One team's members
are distributed across Ireland, England and Wales; the other has members in
locations across Europe and North America. We observed the teams during their
Scrum "ceremonies," and interviewed each team member, during which asked we
asked team members to rate their motivation on a 5 point ordinal scale.
Considering both the reported motivation levels, and qualitative analysis of
our observations and interviews, our results suggest that autonomy appears to
be just one of three job aspects that affect motivation, the others being
competence and relatedness. We hypothesize that (1) autonomy is a necessary but
not sufficient condition for motivation among experienced team members, and (2)
autonomy is not a motivator unless accompanied by sufficient competence.
