Improving the Adoption of Software Engineering Practices Through Persuasive Interventions

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Software engineering practices and methodologies can improve software quality and developer productivity. However, they are not always adopted by developers, even when mandated by an organization. There can be different reasons for this: missing motivation, peer pressure, or perceived complexity can prevent successful adoption. This dissertation provides an approach to improve the adoption of software engineering practices by developers that uses non-coercive means. As an augmentation to mandating practices, it uses persuasive, software-based interventions that can facilitate creativity, autonomy, and other crucial factors in software development. To support organizations in designing such interventions, the thesis provides a catalog of adoption patterns: abstract solutions to adoption problems. A systematic and iterative process provides guidance in the application of these patterns to an organization's situation. An evaluation shows that the process and the adoption patterns are effective.