Read this and change the way you feel about software engineering

The Role of Ethnographic Studies in Empirical Software Engineering

“…For instance, when observing software engineering practices, companies are very wary of letting non-employees access their sourcecode repositories, although some kind of participation is usually necessary in order to keep up with a fast moving project. In this case the researcher might take over documentation tasks [129] or support the project through administration [75].…”

“…The adoption of ethnography by HCI and CSCW researchers led to the acceptance that both long-term and short-term ethnographic studies could provide important insights and meaningful input for design [84]. Examples of long-term ethnography in software engineering include Low et al's [75] 15 monthlong study (4 days a week) of a water utility company and Prior et al's [94] 20 month-long study (45 days in total) of a group of professional software developers. An example of short-term ethnography in software engineering is Example Agile, which consisted of 7 days of study over a three-week period.…”

Trading Discipline for Agility? Questioning the Unfaithful Appropriation of Agile Software Development Practices

“…By valuing individuals and interactions over processes and tools, there is a definite recognition of the social aspects of software engineering [40]. This line of thinking is contra to the historically grounded rational approach described previously.…”

Communication issues in requirements elicitation: a content analysis of stakeholder experiences

“…Given these factors suggested by Morse [37], fewer participants will be needed to reach data saturation (see the study by Low et al [32] for example, which details observational descriptions of software development projects with a similar small concentration of individuals [32]). …”