Human and social factors of software engineering: workshop summary

ABSTRACT

Software is developed for people and by people. Human and social factors have a very strong impact on the success of software development endeavours and the resulting system. Surprisingly, much of software engineering research in the last decade is technical, quantitative and deemphasizes the people aspect. The workshop on Human and Social Factors in Software Engineering has been picking up on the some of the soft aspects in software development that was highlighted in the early days of software engineering. It also follows a recent trend in the software industry, namely the introduction of agile methods, and provides a scientific perspective on these. Including and combining approaches of software engineering with social science, the workshop looked at software engineering from a number of perspectives, including those of agile methods and communication theory, in order to point out solutions and conditions for human-centred software engineering.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.3 Coding Tools and Techniques

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.9 Management

  K. Computing Milieux
  K.4 COMPUTERS AND SOCIETY
      K.4.3 Organizational Impacts

General Terms:
Human Factors

Keywords:
agile methods, communication architectures, decision support, group dynamics, human-centric collaboration support, interaction theory, knowledge dissemination and reuse, management, qualitative studies, social software, software engineering