  Increasing effort is being directed to understanding the personality profiles
of highly engaged information systems (IS) developers and the impact of such
profiles on development outcomes. However, there has been a lesser degree of
attention paid to studying attitudes at a fine-grained level, and relating such
attitudes to developers' in-process activities, in spite of the fact that
social motivation theory notes the importance of such a relationship in general
group work. We have therefore applied linguistic analysis, text mining and
visualization, and statistical analysis techniques to artefacts developed by
474 developers to study these issues. Our results indicate that our sample of
IS developers conveyed a range of attitudes while working to deliver systems
features, and those practitioners who communicated the most were also the most
engaged. Additionally, of eight linguistic dimensions considered, expressions
regarding work and achievement, as well as insightful attitudes, were most
closely related to developers' engagement. Accordingly, team diversity and the
provision of active support for outcome-driven developers may contribute
positively to maintaining team balance and performance.
