Secondary studies on human aspects in software engineering: A tertiary study

Abstract

Context: This study compiles the evidence reported on the human aspects of software engineering in view of providing a comprehensive catalogue of human aspects that have been examined. Objective: To summarise the existing systematic literature on human aspects in software engineering. Method: This study employs published tertiary research guidelines to investigate secondary studies published between 1940 and 2021. Results: We identified 67 secondary studies concentrating on 16 different human aspects research categories, including Agile, Economic Factors, Environmental Factors to Productivity, Success, and Teams. Several trends reveal the topics that have received the least (e.g., “software engineer controllers”) and most (e.g., “individual human aspects”) attention in research. Outcomes show that the number of secondary studies on human aspects in software engineering continues to rise when compared to other software engineering topics, despite experiencing a significant drop in 2020. Many secondary studies implemented established guidelines, especially those published in scholarly journals. While there is variance in the quality of published secondary studies, the average quality score across the investigated studies was 3.09 out of 4.0, with journal-published studies and one thesis having higher quality than conference and workshops papers. Specific institutions are also more central to the publication of secondary studies. Furthermore, there has been noteworthy advancement in the consideration of human aspects across the domain. Finally, we discovered several relationships among human aspects investigated. For example, the “Industry” subject of investigation is strongly correlated with the “Theoretical” study type. Conclusion: The overview provided by this study allows researchers and practitioners to gain familiarity with the current state of research on human aspects, helping researchers to identify gaps for further study and allowing practitioners to discover high-quality, evidence-based approaches to harness the power of human aspects in software engineering.