Managing the human-software environment

A software development team is characterised by a human-software environment (HSE) model, which captures the individual characteristics of the participants in a project such as their professional and specialisation skills and knowledge. The paper presents some practical applications of the HSE model for human resource management (HRM) activities in support of the software development process (SDP). We show how managing the human-software environment facilitates the determination of available and required human resources with respect to the project task(s) and finds an optimal allocation of human resources in the context of economic constraints and customer requirements, etc. The proposed approach is based on mathematical modelling. Illustrative examples are presented.