Human Aspects of Software Engineering

Description

Producing great software as fast as the market demands requires great, productive developers. Yet, what does it mean for an individual developer to be productive, and how can we best help developers to be productive? To answer these questions, researchers in software engineering have been, and are still predominantly looking at the output that software developers create, such as the applications, the source code, or the test cases. This output-oriented focus misses one of the most essential parts in the process of software development: the individual developer who creates the software. Recent advances in technology afford the opportunity to collect a wide variety of detailed information on a software developer and her work, ranging from the number of resolved work items all the way to the cognitive load the developer experiences while working. The availability and accessibility of data on each developer is enabling us to explore questions about developer productivity in powerful new ways. In this course, we investigate how we can ensure the human ingenuity and smarts are being amplified by the processes and tools used to create systems, rather than the humans spending precious cognitive effort dealing with mundane or unnecessary problems. This is an overview of the kinds of topics we cover in this course: * quantitative & qualitative evaluation of software engineering research * (biometric) sensing in software development * developer retrospection, productivity, and well-being * work fragmentation and interruptions * code navigation and exploration * program comprehension * software development tools and environments. Teaching Period: Fall Semester 2025 Assessment Information: This course will be a project and paper-based course. The research project component is the primary component of the course; the outcome of all projects and/or project steps will be presentations and write-ups (similar to research papers or parts thereof). To pass this course, you must pass the research project component (obtain at least 50%) and must obtain a 50% overall mark that is based on the following: 65%: Project, including write-ups (including proposal and intermediate reports), presentation, continuous progress, and meetings; 35%: Readings, including response papers, class participation & leading discussion (in-person class attendance is mandatory), and peer reviews of project write-ups.