Week02b_human_factors.md

Human factors in software engineering

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Hell is other people

Jean-Paul Sartre

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Contents

1. Other people
2. Stakeholder analysis
3. The team
4. Project management
5. Other relationships
6. Further reading

Other people

If you think about software engineering as simply writing code, it is easy to overlook the other people who have an interest in the software products that you are creating. The tour below illustrates some of the most important ones.

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Stakeholder analysis

A stakeholder is any person, group of people or organisation with an interest in a project. The client (or customer) obviously has an interest in the system being built: they have set the requirements and they are paying for it. Depending on the type of system and the context of use, however, there may be many other stakeholders that need to be considered as the development proceeds. The process of mapping out all of these separate concerns is called stakeholder analysis. You need to be aware that sometimes, your software development project may not be welcome and certain stakeholders may be resistant to the intended outcome. Identifying those negative interests can help you to avoid unexpected setbacks.

Smith, 2000 provides a clear explanation of how to conduct a thorough stakeholder analysis.

1. Identify the stakeholders

   Starting with an initial brainstorming session, all possible interests are included. Candidate stakeholders may be dropped later if it becomes clear that they are not in fact concerned with the project.

2. Identify stakeholders' interests, impact level, and relative priority

   The next step is to gather the list of stakeholders into a convenient format such as a spreadsheet, to rate their level of potential impact on the project and rank them in terms of importance. Direct conversations with the stakeholders is useful at this stage.

3. Assess stakeholders for importance and influence

   Influence is an indication of the control that a stakeholder has over the project. The client is very influential because they can terminate the project at any time. Importance quantifies the extent to which a stakeholder is critical for the success of the project. For example, if the target users are dissatisfied with the outcome, the project may be considered a failure.

   As part of this step it can be useful to visualise stakeholders on a chart divided into four quadrants as shown in Fig. 1. Those in the top right quadrant are the key stakeholders for your project.
   
   

   

   Fig. 1: Stakeholders mapped by importance and influence

4. Outline assumptions and risks

   Risk management in a software development project usually focuses on resource availability and technical risks. One of the benefits of performing a stakeholder analysis is that it offers a simple way to include sociopolitical risks into your thinking. This information can be added to the spreadsheet.

5. Define stakeholder participation

   This final step is about making decisions about who should participate in the project and when. Some stekholders just need to be kept informed; others need to be actively kept on-side.

The team

Your closest relationships are likely to be with the rest of your team. They act as mentors, sounding board, technical support, collaborators, etc. Effective teamwork is essential in any software engineering environment. The following important topics in this area are covered in Stephens, 2022, Ch. 3:

• The features of an effective team
• Team roles
• Team culture
• Physical environment
• Collaboration software

Project management

The vast majority of software development takes place within a managed project. As a software engineer, you need to be familiar with common project management concepts and techniques even if you are not directly responsible for managing the project. The following important topics are covered in O'Regen, 2022, Ch. 4

• Project structures
• Project planning and time estimation
• Risk management
• Project quality management
• Project processes
• Management of agile projects

Other relationships

At this stage of the module, a familiarity with the concepts and concerns related to team and project relationships is the priority. Later in the module, we will also be considering interactions between the software engineer and other groups of people including end users and security specialists.

Further reading

The minimum reading for this week includes the two book chapters mentioned above. If you would like to improve your understanding further, you might like to look at the following:

• Stephens, 2022, Ch. 4
• Rehman et al., 2019