The Human Factor in Software Engineering

The IREB (International Requirements Engineering Board) has published a paper about the relationship (especially the compatibility) of requirements engineering and agile development: download here.

Currently, I am caught in the old game: The project´s final date was fixed. I was asked how many of the project´s work packages I can do until that date, within six weeks. Now, I am waiting for the information about which work packages will be mine. The project´s start date is moving, but I bet that the final date will stay fixed. Fortunately, my estimations contained a buffer... Risk management means: You never know what will happen. But you can be certain that something will happen!

You can find here a very good, differentiated discussion of Google´s significance for publishers: "Warum wir Google fürchten"(in German). It discusses how publishers depend on Google, pay them and in the same time fight them. Must we all fear Google?

We all play two roles in Google´s game: We are those who search for knowledge and we also offer information via the internet and expect Google to help us being found.

Google makes things transparent. But due to selection algorithms, SEO and paid advertisements, they also distort our perception of the world. Websites not listed by Google o na top place practically do not exist. So, when you set up a website, you must know Google´s algorithms to optimize the probability that you are found. You not only optimize websites for the reader, but for Google, too! Well, this is marketing.

What we must never forget, however, is that the Internet is still ours. As the data sources and data owners, we must take care what we publish and how, and we must defend our data. Why do people use Gmail when they know that Google can read their emails? Why do they store confidential documents in Google.doc? Anyway, why do we produce so many electronic data? Does everything in our live need documentation?

And as someone looking for information, we must not forget that there are other ways of finding information than by Google. We can subscribe to newsletters, we can recommend websites to each other, we can link to other websites on ours. Just like in the old times when search engines were bad and led us to sex websites mainly. In these days, no-one trusted in search engines and when you did an online research, you asked friends and experts in discussion forums, you collected URL lists published in (printed) magazines, and people formed "web rings" where a list of webpages linked to each other in order to form a surf ring of websites treating similar topics. We can still do that!

Clearly: Freelancers are cheaper than employees.
In the IT domain, the difference is not as large as in other areas. However, it is evident, when you calculate all cost caused by an employee like paid vacations, work place and technology used, administrative support, training. Take the salary times 2.4 and you get the complete cost an employee causes.

I believe that there is always a reason for such differences. Money is taken so important by most people and therefore serves as an important criterion for decisions of all kinds. A thing´s price therefore measures its value. Not its objective value, but the subjective value. The price results from a measuring of forces of those who sell and those who buy.

As freelancers are cheaper than employees, this creates two questions which can discuss how the price differences was created and why it stays:

1.) Why do employers employ people if they can get
a freelancer cheaper? The naive reply would be that employers mainly pay for loyality and knowledge management. They need at least a core team which collects and conserves experiences, so errors are not repeated. However, their readiness to fire people shows this is not always the explanation. I believe it is like this: Each manager´s importance is measured by the number of his employees, not his freelancers. So, he has an interest in having employees below him to give him importance. It is the same for the company. A company´s size is measured in number of employees. So, by employing people, who might be more expensive and less productive than freelancers, the company buys reputation. I know only one exception: Private universities measure their size in number of students, not by professors or employees. So, they can work with few professors and many freelance trainers.

2.) Why do people work for less money, if as an
employee they could earn more? What do they pay this
financial price for?
There can be different reasons for this. The low income can be the prize of risk and opportunity. As a freelancer, you might earn several thousand a day, but it is also possible that you must work much for a low income. In average, it will be lower than for an employee, calculating all your overhead like insurances, training, income loss during vacations and all.
However, some have no choice. Being competent but having an unusual CV, they pay the price for going their own way before. Maybe, they were too eager and changed job for improvement too often, maybe they said their opinion too often or made important people their ennemies.
For me, the risk and lower income are the price of freedom. I can follow my own ideas, at own risk. Especially in terms of moral. No lying to customers, no intrigues in the "team", just results and quality. As an employee, I felt like by paying me a salary, I belong to the company completely, including my spare time and my opinions. My customers do not demand such things from me! I am not paid for having no own opinion, but I am paid for having one!

And I am back from CreaRE. We had an inspiring workshop where we could hear about different techniques to design games and to creatively elicit requirements, their advantages and disadvantages. And we also practiced one of them, live in the group. My favourite citation was: "Everything is better than brainstorming." Yes, very true! My own experiences and the related scientific publications all show that brainstorming is out. There are other simple methods which you can do without preparation, needing no specific material and which are more effective.
We will write a longer report about the workshop and publish it in a journal.

Finally, the course was a presentation course given by a theatre actror. So, half of the content was the normal presentation stuff. What I liked most was the part about voice. To see how slight differences in how lips or teeth are moved make a difference in the sound of the voice and the effect of what is said. Unfortunately, the group was quite large. Therefore, we could not get too much individuel feedback. But I am highly motivated to do the exercises learned. I have already started, although it is a bit difficult when spending so much time in public. Others are not so much interested in my lala and ptk, and even the grimaces of the lip training might look scaring. :-) Lalala, ptk, lalala, ptk...

CreaRE 2014 takes place on 7th April in Essen:
https://www.se.uni-hannover.de/events/creare-2014. It contains two scientific papers, one key note presentation about requirements engineering for games and fun, and a tutorial about creativity in RE.

We are looking forwards to an interactive workshop!

The only place where the content of a presentation is more important than form are scientific conferences. There, the study presented and the results achieved are discussed. I believe that this is because the audience

1. is competent enough to understand the presentation´s content,
2. is interested in the content,
3. has clear criteria for judging scientific studies,
4. and has a lot of experience in listening and judging.

The audience of most other presentations lacks one or several of these competences. Maybe, this is the reason why most questionnaires asking participants of trainings and audience of presentations contain more questions about the form of presentation than about the content. For instance, I like the question: "The lecturer appears to be competent". It is correct to ask it this way because if the students could judge whether I am competent and teach them the most relevant content, they could give the lecture themselves.

However, I see a clear trend towards a general social development, even within science to be more interested in a presentation´s form than the content. I think that several trends lead in this direction:

• Life, science, technology etc. become more and more complex and it is difficult to keep up with the development. Therefore, it can happen that you do not understand each presentation´s content. But you can still judge the speaker according to criteria like voice, body language, which are so general that you can even apply them to a presentation given in a language you do not speak at all or to a presentation which you followed only five minutes, because the rest of the time you spent writing e-mails. So, judging the way of presentation can superbly hide that you did not follow the presentation mentally.
• In order to become a good speaker yourself, you have visited several speaker courses. They were hard. Every muscle of your body was criticized and you must control yourself completely. Like this, you learn to observe. And as people are critical with you, you are also critical with others. Hey, they are so much worse than you, because they evidently have spent less time in presentation courses than you did! They even do not know the basics.
• According to two studies cited by almost everyone, it is scientifically proven that audience judges a presentation by form and only to a very small fraction by content. I would be very interested in reading the original study, but the references are never given. It is possible that this research result has some threats to validity. Nevertheless, these claims influence people´s behaviour. Of course, they imitate the study´s participants because they receive the message that if everyone does this, it must be natural and good. Even if the purpose of presenting these studies is always so evident. It is either the motivational slide of a seminar about presentation techniques or a sales presentation for such a seminar. Well, as meanwhile these studies are so well-known, we can be sure that in replicating the study, we will find similar results. But in the good old times, I listened to a lot of really bad presentations, and we never said more than one sentence about it. We were really interested in the content, and as long as the presentation style did not keep us from understanding (even that happened), it was OK. Scientists did not need to be actors in these days. Meanwhile, there is a complete industry of people who earn their living by embellishing presentation slides, turning videos for presentations, consulting about the ideal style of clothing, hair-dress and make-up, and coaching presenters for hours for a 20-minutes-presentation.
• In literature, it is said that the fiercest book reviews stem from unsuccessful authors. This means, too, that the more critically and nastily the form of presentations is judged by the audience, the more critical become those who have been criticized severely themselves. This can lead to a vicious circle where the atmosphere in presentations becomes more and more aggressive. Nothing less than a perfect presentation is accepted. People not able to give perfect speeches are not allowed to talk. And not elected president anyway.

The problem about this development is that the discussion about a presentation´s form distracts from the content. With every year, I must spend more care on colours, forms, font types, multimedia, entertainment, didactics and body language. Next week, I will attend to a theatre course. I know from my
presentation and course evaluations that my competences as an actress are not sufficient. As a lecturer, I must take an actor training to authentically simulate the passion that I really feel. The audience does not perceive real passion (any more!). They are used to the exaggeration which is so typical for the stage. Of course, the theatre training costs a lot of time which I then can not spend for preparing content. But the audience is demanding for actors on the stages of science and seminars.

I would wish that we concentrate more on content, even in the days of multimedia. I do. Because my passion for knowledge is still stronger than my passion for colourful empty boxes.

Each time, when I am new at a university, I ask a lot of questions. Those who know only this one university immediately believe that I have never before given a lecture. Otherwise, I would know how a lecture and its exams are organized. But I tell you: The universities are all different, just as their restaurants are...

I just learned that at the university where I teach for the first time this summer, I must bring my own VGA cable with me. Hey, this is new! Is a VGA cable a normal teaching equipment? To bring along my laptop is standard. At one university, we had to bring our own remote control for the beamer, something that I did not know before. Here, it is the VGA cable. OK, this costs 1€ at Ebay. I hope that it will arrive here before the first lecture, otherwise I must improvise. Well, at least, I was told so. It might also happen that they forget to say something so self-evident.