Abstract Context: Requirements Engineering (RE)-related activities are critical in developing quality software and one of the most human-dependent processes in software engineering (SE). Hence, identifying the impact of diverse human-related aspects on RE is crucial in the SE context. Objective: Our study explores the impact of one of the most influential human aspects, motivation on RE, aiming to deepen understanding and provide practical guidance. Method: By conducting semi-structured interviews with 21 RE-involved practitioners, we developed a theory using socio-technical grounded theory (STGT) that explains the contextual, causal, and intervening conditions influencing motivation in RE-related activities. Result: We identified strategies to enhance motivating situations or mitigate demotivating ones, and the consequences resulting from applying these strategies. Conclusion: Our findings offer actionable insights for software practitioners to manage the influence of motivation on RE and help researchers further investigate its role across various SE contexts in the future.

Humour has long been recognized as a key factor in enhancing creativity, group effectiveness, and employee well-being across various domains. However, its occurrence and impact within software engineering (SE) teams remains under-explored. This paper introduces a comprehensive, literature review-based taxonomy exploring the characterisation and use of humour in SE teams, with the goal of boosting productivity, improving communication, and fostering a positive work environment while emphasising the responsible use of humour to mitigate its potential negative impacts. Drawing from a wide array of studies in psychology, sociology, and organizational behavior, our proposed framework categorizes humour into distinct theories, styles, models, and scales, offering SE professionals and researchers a structured approach to understanding humour in their work. This study also addresses the unique challenges of applying humour in SE, highlighting its potential benefits while acknowledging the need for further empirical validation in this context. Ultimately, our study aims to pave the way for more cohesive, creative, and psychologically supportive SE environments through the strategic use of humour.

This paper shares insights from our first-hand experience with key recruitment challenges encountered in software engineering research, focusing on two distinct participant groups: end-users and software practitioners. By conducting a reflective analysis, we emphasise the particular challenges we faced when engaging these groups during empirical study recruitment phases. Significant challenges we faced in recruiting end-users include ensuring authenticity, maintaining engagement, achieving demographic diversity, and addressing privacy concerns. Conversely, we faced different challenges when recruiting software practitioners, including sourcing the right expertise, utilising online recruiting platforms, navigating time constraints, aligning incentives, obtaining a representative sample, and coordinating with remote and distributed teams. By detailing the strategies we employed to address these challenges, this paper contributes practical knowledge to enhance the efficacy and inclusiveness of research practices, ultimately fostering more robust software engineering research outcomes.

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic changed the way we live, work and the way we conduct research. With the restrictions of lockdowns and social distancing, various impacts were experienced by many software engineering researchers, especially whose studies depend on human participants. We conducted a mixed methods study to understand the extent of this impact. Through a detailed survey with 89 software engineering researchers working with human participants around the world and a further nine follow-up interviews, we identified the key challenges faced, the adaptations made, and the surprising fringe benefits of conducting research involving human participants during the pandemic. Our findings also revealed that in retrospect, many researchers did not wish to revert to the old ways of conducting human-orienfted research. Based on our analysis and insights, we share recommendations on how to conduct remote studies with human participants effectively in an increasingly hybrid world when face-to-face engagement is not possible or where remote participation is preferred.

Requirements Engineering (RE) is an essential part of Software Engineering (SE). As RE activities rely heavily on people, the success of RE is influenced by the human aspects of the team involved. In this research, we develop a prototype application, called Motive Metrics, to improve RE activities by allowing managers to track developers’ personality and motivation and monitor their impact on developer performance and satisfaction. The tool takes the form of an extension to Jira and was developed through rapid prototyping. The effectiveness and usability of the tool were evaluated by student teams split into managers and team members. When evaluating Motive Metrics, 45.5% of participants rated 4 out of 5 for the application’s effectiveness in capturing personalities, but only 9.1% of participants rated 4 out of 5 for capturing motivations. Motive Metrics is likely ineffective in monitoring satisfaction and performance, as 45% of participants rated 1 out of 5 in comfort in sharing their responses. Our evaluation results also show that Motive Metrics might not be beneficial in tracking the influence of motivation on the outcome but slightly more beneficial in tracking the influence of personality on RE task performance.

Requirements Engineering (RE)-related activities require high collaboration between various roles in software engineering (SE), such as requirements engineers, stakeholders, developers, and so on. 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, and so on—might impact RE-related activities would help us improve RE and SE in general. This study aims at better understanding 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’ key motivational factors when involved in RE-related activities, along with 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 some feedback 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.

Requirements Engineering (RE) requires the collaboration of various roles in SE, such as requirements engineers, stakeholders and other developers, and it is thus a very highly human dependent process in software engineering (SE). Identifying how“human aspects”– such as personality, motivation, emotions, communication, gender, culture and geographic distribution – might impact on the RE process would assist us in better supporting successful RE. The main objective of this paper is to systematically review primary studies that have investigated the effects of various human aspects on the RE process. We wanted to identify if any critical human aspects have been found, and what might be the relationships between different human aspects impacting the RE process. A systematic literature review (SLR) was conducted and identified 474 initial primary research studies. These were eventually filtered down to 74 relevant, high-quality primary studies. No primary study to date was found to focus on identifying what are the most influential human aspects on the RE process. Among the studied human aspects, the effects of communication have been considered in many studies of RE. Other human aspects such as personality, motivation and gender have mainly been investigated to date in relation to more general SE studies that include RE as one phase. Findings show that studying more than one human aspect together is beneficial, as this reveals relationships between various human aspects and how they together impact the RE process. However, the majority of these studied combinations of human aspects are unique. From 56.8 percent of studies that identified the effects of human aspects on RE, 40.5 percent identified the positive impact, 30.9 percent negative, 26.2 percent identified both impacts whereas 2.3 percent mentioned that there was no impact. This implies that a variety of human aspects positively or negatively affects the RE process and a well-defined theoretical analysis on the effects of different human aspects on RE remains to be defined and practically evaluated. The findings of this SLR help researchers who are investigating the impact of various human aspects on the RE process by identifying well-studied research areas, and highlight new areas that should be focused on in future research.