The Human Factor in Software Engineering

A citation from Grace Hopper: "It´s always easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission." *lol* I always say something similar: "If you ask for permission, you risk to get a negative answer."

Am 22. Oktober findet ab 17:30 Uhr die Auftaktveranstaltung für meine Klara Marie Faßbinder Gastprofessur an der FH Bingen statt. Der Titel meines Vortrags lautet: "Frauen im Software-Engineering - Stand der Forschung". Ort und Zeit finden Sie hier.

Meine Webseite ist nun online:
www.herrmann-ehrlich.de
"Ehrlich" ist nicht mein Partner, sondern das Firmenmotto. :-)

My website now is online:
www.herrmann-ehrlich.de

I proudly can announce that my article submitted to the journal "Risk Analysis" has been accepted. After having been in the repeated reviewing process for one year. These experts gave me a lot to think about, to read further literature, to do further statistical analyses, etc. It is a hard job to publish in a good journal. :-)
Anyway, persistence often pays. It is just important to know / guess right where this will be the case.

Nun ist es offiziell: Im Wintersemester 2012/13 bekleide ich eine Gastprofessur an der FH Bingen. Meine Aufgaben bestehen in Vorlesungen über Software Engineering, Projektmanagement und wissenschaftliches Arbeiten. Außerdem führe ich mindestens zwei wissenschaftliche Studien zur Gender-Forschung in der Informatik durch.

It is now official: In the winter semester 2012/13 I will be guest professor at the University of Applied Sciences of Bingen. My tasks will be lectures in Software Engineering, Project Management and Scientific Research. Additionally, I undertake at least two scientific studies about gender in computer sciences.

A great and recent literature overview about group performance can be found here:

pdf

Teams are not always more efficient than individuals. Whether they are depends on

• the task type,
• process losses by coordination loss, production blocking and motivation loss,
• but also on motivation gain by social competition + social compensation + Köhler effect,
• individual capability gains and losses,
• leadership style
• group composition,
• group synchronization, and
• group learning.

The article discusses research findings and draws conclusions for practical work.

My literature research also brought me to this study about bullying:
http://www.pistes.uqam.ca/v7n3/articles/v7n3a2en.htm
There are many interesting findings in this study. I am most interested in these two:
- Men are bullied by their superiors exclusively and women not only from above but from all directions, including colleagues and even those below her in hierarchy. This is a strong evidence that women´s position in hierarchy is differently perceived than for men.
- Bullying seems to be related to and supported by performance-based payment. This corresponds to my experience with this tool of HR management. It is a powerful tool, exercising strong influence on people´s thinking and decisions, but it is like magic: powerful, but not completely controllable. I believe that performance- or object-oriented payment/ management destroys the team spirit. Maybe, one should treat teams as a unit and define team objectives, but I am not completely sure that this would work well. I remember from sports where the ambitious team bullied weaker team members. When they get rid of low performers, the team performance is higher. So, maybe management by numbers is a Pandora box that one should not open at all.

Most people say that weeks pass faster the older one gets and also life becomes more hectic. I believe: This is not true at all. On the opposite, our growing experience and self-confidence should take stress from us. The reason why people perceive life flying away and imposing more pressure is that they carry around more and more clutter with them. One of the handfull books that really changed my life is Karen Kingston´s "Clear Your Clutter With Feng Shui". This book´s principles I not only apply to clearing my appartment (the purpose for what the book was written), but also to data (clutter) and to time management. Recently, I deleted lots of GByte of data. And it helps. During the last years, my life has become less and less hectic thanks to my constant strive for de-cluttering, which also includes knowing exactly why each thing, person, task or working group is part of my life. There is almost nothing left that causes me negative stress, bad feelings or loss of energy. If you are interested, I can offer a course about this. For the start, you can also read Karen Kingston´s book and find out what it can do for you.

With respect to data clutter, I see the danger that you now think that storage space nowadays costs almost nothing. However, deleting and archieving is not the same. And things that are out of sight are NOT out of mind. Your subconscience knows exactly what data clutter you hide in your basements and in your data archives. And if they cause you pain when you think of them, they also cause you pain while only your subconscious mind knows of them. Delete them, trample the archive CD to pieces! (Of course, I take no warranty for any consequences of what you do. Sometimes, laws force us to archive data clutter for ten years or so. But you can at least delete the data after the legally demanded period.)