Performance assessment of Indian software professionals

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop and validate an instrument/scale to assess the performance of Indian software professionals (SPs). Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected from 441 software and senior software engineers from eight Indian software firms. The team leaders assessed the performance of software and senior software engineers on 16 items. The software engineers self‐reported their experience, need for achievement, and need for social power. The financial performance (FP) of the software firms where the software engineers were working was procured from secondary sources. Findings – The exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of scores on 16 items of the instrument suggest six dimensions of performance. They are work‐efficiency, personal resourcefulness, inter‐ and intra‐personal sensitivity, productivity orientation, timeliness, and business intelligence. The dimensions have reliability and high convergent validity. SPs having more years of experience, higher need for achievement, and higher need for social power are high performers. The (low) high performing SPs are from firms that have (lower) higher FP. Practical implications – Human resource managers can evaluate the performance of SPs holistically on six dimensions for training, reward administration, job rotation, and promotion decisions. Originality/value – This paper develops a behavioural instrument to assess the performance of Indian SPs.