Requirements Engineering (RE) requires the collaboration of various roles in SE, such as requirements engineers, stakeholders and other developers, and it is thus a very highly human dependent process in software engineering (SE). Identifying how "human aspects" -such as personality, motivation, emotions, communication, gender, culture and geographic distribution -might impact on the RE process would assist us in better supporting successful RE. The main objective of this paper is to systematically review primary studies that have investigated the effects of various human aspects on the RE process. We wanted to identify if any critical human aspects have been found, and what might be the relationships between different human aspects impacting the RE process. A systematic literature review (SLR) was conducted and identified 474 initial primary research studies. These were eventually filtered down to 74 relevant, high-quality primary studies. No primary study to date was found to focus on identifying what are the most influential human aspects on the RE process. Among the studied human aspects, the effects of communication have been considered in many studies of RE. Other human aspects such as personality, motivation and gender have mainly been investigated to date in relation to more general SE studies that include RE as one phase. Findings show that studying more than one human aspect together is beneficial, as this reveals relationships between various human aspects and how they together impact the RE process. However, the majority of these studied combinations of human aspects are unique. From 56.8% of studies that identified the effects of human aspects on RE, 40.5% identified the positive impact, 30.9% negative, 26.2% identified both impacts whereas 2.3% mentioned that there was no impact. This implies that a variety of human aspects positively or negatively affects the RE process and a well-defined theoretical analysis on the effects of different human aspects on RE remains to be defined and practically evaluated. The findings of this SLR help researchers who are investigating the impact of various human aspects on the RE process by identifying well-studied research areas, and highlight new areas that should be focused on in future research.

Requirements Engineering (RE)-related activities require high collaboration between various roles in software engineering (SE), such as requirements engineers, stakeholders, developers, etc. Their demographics, views, understanding of technologies, working styles, communication and collaboration capabilities make RE highly human dependent. Identifying how ”human aspects” – such as motivation, domain knowledge, communication skills, personality, emotions, culture, etc.– might impact RE-related activities would help us improve RE and SE in general. This study aims to better understand current industry perspectives on the influence of human aspects on RE-related activities, specifically focusing on motivation and personality, by targeting software practitioners involved in RE-related activities. Our findings indicate that software practitioners consider motivation, domain knowledge, attitude, communication skills and personality as highly important human aspects when involved in RE-related activities. A set of factors were identified as software practitioners’ key motivational factors when involved in RE-related activities, along with important personality characteristics to have when involved in RE. We also identified factors that made individuals less effective when involved in RE-related activities and obtained some feedback on measuring individuals’ performance when involved in RE. The findings from our study suggest various areas needing more investigation, and we summarise a set of key recommendations for further research.

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Requirements Engineering (RE) is a process that requires high collaboration between various roles in software engineering (SE), such as requirements engineers, stakeholders, developers, etc. Their demographics, views, understanding of technologies, working styles, communication and collaboration capabilities make RE highly human dependent. Identifying how such "human aspects"-such as motivation, domain knowledge, communication skills, personality, emotions, culture, etc-might impact RE would help us to improve the RE activities and SE in general. The aim of this study is to understand current industry perspectives on the influence of human aspects on RE. We surveyed 111 software practitioners involved in RE activities, and our findings show that 86.4% of participants agree, that the success of RE greatly depends on the people involved in it. Software practitioners consider motivation, domain knowledge, attitude, communication skills and personality as highly important human aspects when involved in RE. A set of factors, we categorize as human/social and technical, were identified as software practitioners' motivation factors when involved in RE activities, where the majority of are motivated due to human/social factors. Furthermore, our findings suggest that software practitioners' personality characteristics should also be paid more attention to as they are important when conducting RE effectively.CCS Concepts: • Software and its engineering → Requirements engineering.