Human Factors in Software Engineering

There are many human factors involved in Software Engineering. It is reasonable to say so because software engineering is an essentially human centered activity.

In this paper, the human factors influencing software development process are named and mentioned.

Human factors are also covered in the topics of Management. Many human factors like Interpersonal Communication, Leadership, etc(I can recall from my Management class) are covered in Management classes. So, I will be dealing with some management concepts too in this post.

In fact, Software Engineering and Management has given birth to a new field called: Software Project Management.

Following are some concepts covered under both Management and Software Engineering.

- Cost Estimation
- Risk Analysis/Risk Management
- Activity Planning
- Resource Management
- People Management

Here I mention various phases in Software Development Life cycle and how they relate to various human factors:

Requirement Engineering

It involves the process of gathering information.

There are many human factors in RE.

- Multi-languages
- Culture
- Stakeholder
- Time zone boundaries

Design


Design is also related to many human factors.

Implementation


Apart from technical skills like knowledge of the code.
Implementation is also affected by characteristics of the programmer.

Testing


I have written a whole post describing how testing is influenced by human factors. You can read it here:
http://softwarequality-cognitivepsyc.blogspot.com/2010/10/psychology-in-software-testing.html

Mantainance


At this time, the project is more related to human issues.

Writing Technical Document


Writing technical documents is also greatly influenced by human factors.

For example, there are courses on 'International Technical Writing', where they take into account the various human factors like language differences, cultural differences while preparing technical documents.

References:

http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3139.3140