Research on human aspects within the field of SE has been steadily gaining prominence in recent years. These human aspects have a significant impact on SE due to the inherently interactive and collaborative nature of the discipline. We conducted a SLR to plot the current landscape of primary studies by examining the human aspects that influence developer-user interactions, their implications, interrelationships, and how existing studies address these implications.

This systematic literature review was conducted by following Kitchenham and Charters’ guidelines. We performed a comprehensive search on six digital databases and adopted an exhaustive backward and forward snowballing process. We followed a thorough filtration process comprising three screening phases and 46 papers were selected for data extraction. We synthesised data to answer our four research questions.

We found key objectives for conducting these primary studies, details regarding methodology and participants of each study. We identified human aspects studied in each primary study and categorised them based on a taxonomy of human aspects. We also discovered the relationships among human aspects and the impact of human aspects explored in the primary studies. We analysed the outcomes, evaluation methods, limitations and future work of each primary study. Using these identified limitations and future work, we framed the key research gaps and proposed recommendations for future research and practice.

More details: Gunatilake, H., Grundy, J., Hoda, R., & Mueller, I. (2024). The impact of human aspects on the interactions between software developers and end-users in software engineering: A systematic literature review. Information and Software Technology, 107489 – [preprint]