How to Use This Book

This book can be used as a course textbook and for practitioners .

As a textbook, the book can be used in software engineering departments for courses that deal with software engineering methods in general or with human aspects of software engineering in particular. There are no specific prerequisites are required. However, as mentioned previously, it is recommended that learners who use the book have some experience with software development. Such experience may improve their understanding of the discussed topics.

The different chapters of the book can also be used separately in other software engineering courses when instructors want to highlight human aspects of a specific topic. For example, Chapter 8, which presents the history of software engineering, may be integrated naturally into a Methods of Software Engineering course for highlighting the course material from the historical perspective.

In industry, the book can be used for software engineering practitioners. In this case, practitioners can use it when they want to learn a specific topic or increase the awareness of their software teams to human aspects of software engineering. The second goal can be achieved, for example, by organizing a seminar about the human aspects of software engineering based on selected topics presented in the book that are relevant to the particular software development environment.

Whether the book is used in academia or in industry, the order in which the chapters are presented is only a suggestion. Because the various chapters are self-contained yet sometimes dependent, they can be learned in almost any order. To help readers navigate, relationships between different chapters are mentioned when appropriate.