After a relatively busy summer, complete with a move across the mountains, I recently started my PhD with the CHISEL group at UVic. There were many reasons why CHISEL was a good fit for me, especially our shared interest in the Human aspects of Software Engineering, and supporting users and developers.
My supervisor advised me that at the start of any major research undertaking (such as a PhD), it would be a good idea to get a broad understanding of the other research currently going on in this area. Besides just delving into some large sources (Conferences, Google Scholar), we thought it might be interesting to see what other researchers’ favourite papers in this area might be. As a software engineering researcher, I’m interested specifically in software engineering papers, but more specifically, I’m interested in those that focus on the human aspects: What kind of challenges do developers face? How are they limited by today’s tools and methodologies?
So I’m opening this up to whomever reads this. What are your favourite SE papers that deal with the Human Aspects? Maybe it is one that had something new and surprising that you didn’t know, or that you didn’t expect before hand. I’d love to know about your favourite papers, in the comments, or via twitter: @jamiestarke.
