Using a Niko-Niko Calendar with ARCS to Improve the Team Members' Motivation in Software Projects

This paper presents an agile approach to track the team members' emotional state in software projects by using the Niko-Niko Calendar. The calendar encourages open communication, empathy, and continuous improvement for enhancing team dynamics and fostering a positive work environment. Since the original calendar proposal does not include a guideline on how the emotions shared by the team members could be handled, this paper suggests the usage of the Attention, Relevance, Confidence and Satisfaction Model to provide motivational feedback. The proposal was implemented in a project of one software enterprise in Mexico, obtaining a positive evaluation from the practitioners who responded a questionnaire based on the Instructional Materials Motivation Survey.