The Influence of Human Aspects on Requirements Engineering-related Activities: Software Practitioners Perspective

TL;DR

This paper explores how human factors like motivation and personality influence requirements engineering activities, based on industry practitioners' perspectives, highlighting key factors and suggesting areas for further research.

Contribution

It provides empirical insights into the impact of human aspects on RE activities, focusing on motivation and personality from software practitioners' viewpoints.

Findings

Practitioners consider motivation, domain knowledge, attitude, communication skills, and personality highly important.

Identified motivational factors and personality traits crucial for effective RE activities.

Factors affecting individual effectiveness in RE activities and initial performance measurement ideas.

Abstract

Requirements Engineering (RE)-related activities require high collaboration between various roles in software engineering (SE), such as requirements engineers, stakeholders, developers, etc. Their demographics, views, understanding of technologies, working styles, communication and collaboration capabilities make RE highly human dependent. Identifying how "human aspects" such as motivation, domain knowledge, communication skills, personality, emotions, culture, etc. might impact RE-related activities would help us improve the RE and SE in general. This study aims to better understand current industry perspectives on the influence of human aspects on RE-related activities, specifically focusing on motivation and personality by targeting software practitioners involved in RE-related activities. Our findings indicate that software practitioners consider motivation, domain knowledge, attitude, communication skills and personality as highly important human aspects when involved in RE-related activities. A set of factors were identified as software practitioners motivational factors when involved in RE-related activities and identified important personality characteristics to have when involved in RE. We also identified factors that made individuals less effective when involved in RE-related activities and obtained an initial idea on measuring individuals performance when involved in RE. The findings from our study suggest various areas needing more investigation, and we summarise a set of key recommendations for further research.