Effective People Management Practices for Software Project Success

Marcelo Falkowski Burkard and Lisandra Manzoni Fontoura

Programa de P

os-Graduac¸

ao em Ci

encia da Computac¸

ao, Federal University of Santa Maria (UFSM), Brazil

Keywords:

People Management, Good Practices, Problems, Systematic Literature Review.

Abstract:

Research on people management practices is crucial because they signiﬁcantly inﬂuence the results of software

projects, help improve decision compliance, and maintain a qualiﬁed workforce. However, there is a tendency

for managers to rely on personal experience rather than evidence-based knowledge when implementing people

management practices. Compiling good practices can assist managers in implementing people management

practices, reducing resistance, and, at the same time, collecting indicators that can be used to evaluate the ef-

fectiveness of practices. This work documents good practices that can support people management in software

projects based on the compilation of practices. To this end, we carried out a systematic literature review (SLR)

to identify common problems in people management in software projects and effective practices to resolve

them. Initially, SLR returned 2495 unduplicated primary studies. After a detailed analysis, 63 studies were

selected and organized into nine problem categories and sixteen practices. Through a survey, these practices

were validated by 31 software professionals, allowing them to be classiﬁed according to the general relevance

of the practice and to resolve each associated problem. The ﬁndings reveal the predominance of interpersonal

skills (soft skills) over technical skills (hard skills) and emphasize the importance of practices such as contin-

uous feedback, open communication, and transparent management.

1 INTRODUCTION

The importance of people management in software

projects is underscored by de Alc

antara et al. (2018),

who emphasize the need for a model to guide this

critical aspect of project management. Hussain et al.

(2021) and Fahmy et al. (2018) identify selecting

the right team members as crucial to project suc-

cess. Brand

ao et al. (2021) highlight the role of these

practices in improving compliance with decisions and

maintaining a skilled workforce.

Good practices lead organizations to ever higher

performance. According to Kerzner (2006), best

practices guide continuous improvements, leading to

adopting new best practices. So, the practice’s appli-

cability depends on the characteristics of the project

to which it will be applied. Therefore, it is up to the

manager to assess when and where to use it.

Bezzina et al. (2017) highlighted the tendency of

managers to rely on personal experience rather than

evidence-based knowledge when implementing PM

practices. Finally, Bianchi et al. (2017) identiﬁed a

gap in research on the role of leaders in strategic peo-

ple management, suggesting an integration of theoret-

ical models to address this issue.

The main goal of this project is to create a col-

lection of effective people management practices by

gathering practices mentioned in recent studies (cov-

ering publications from 2016 to 2023). The collection

of people management practices makes it easy to ﬁnd

practices appropriate to the context of each project.

The structure of this paper is as follows. Sec-

tion 2 explains the methodology employed in devel-

oping this work. Section 3 offers a comprehensive

overview of the systematic literature review. Section

4 describes the survey utilized to validate the prac-

tices. Lastly, Section 5 provides conclusions and sug-

gestions for future work.

2 METHODOLOGY

The methodology of this research consists of three

phases, as shown in Figure 1:

Phase 1 - Systematic Literature Review (SLR): We

carried out an SLR to identify the problems related to

people management that affect software development

projects and which practices cited by the authors tend

to solve these problems.

Phase 2 - Documentation of Practices: For each prac-

206

Burkard, M. and Fontoura, L.

Effective People Management Practices for Software Project Success.

DOI: 10.5220/0012675700003690

Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

In Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS 2024) - Volume 2, pages 206-213

ISBN: 978-989-758-692-7; ISSN: 2184-4992

Figure 1: The research methodology.

tice identiﬁed in the SLR, we prepared a descriptive

and summary text, consolidating the information ex-

tracted from primary studies and providing a compre-

hensive and applicable understanding of people man-

agement practices in the context of software develop-

ment projects. After documenting the practices, cor-

relations were established between each speciﬁc prac-

tice and one or more categories of problems the prac-

tice aims to solve.

Phase 3 - Survey to validate practices: To validate

the proposed practices, we surveyed professionals to

evaluate the practices identiﬁed and reveal their rele-

vance.

In Phase 1, we used a search string to select ar-

ticles automatically using the review protocol pro-

posed by Kitchenham and Charters (2007). Later, we

applied the snowballing technique to search for arti-

cles from the references of previously selected arti-

cles (Wohlin, 2014). This way, we could increase the

number of selected articles.

This work conducts an SLR to identify people

management problems and practices, seeking recent

literature to answer the following questions:

• RQ1: What people management problems were

cited by the authors of the primary study that af-

fect software development projects?

• RQ2: What practices related to people manage-

ment were cited by the primary study authors that

tend to solve problems in software development

projects?

Based on these questions and the work objectives, we

have deﬁned the search string shown in Table 1.

Table 1: The base search string for all search engines.

Search string

(“software development” OR “software project”

OR “software engineering”) AND (“human re-

source” OR “human resources” OR “people fac-

tor”) AND (“productivity” OR “performance”)

The exclusion criteria were deﬁned from Kitchen-

ham and Charters (2007). The exclusion criteria

adopted were: EC1 (not primary study), EC2 (not an-

swer research questions), EC3 (presented as a book),

EC4 (published before 2016), EC5 (not published in

English), EC6 (duplicate study), and EC7 (with less

than 15 score points).

We performed the primary search in four

databases: ACM Digital Library, IEEE Xplore, Sci-

elo, and ScienceDirect. Only libraries that could ex-

port ﬁles in the BibTeX format with a summary in-

cluded were considered. The results were exported in

ﬁles in the BibTeX format, including abstracts and all

metadata. ACM found 969, IEEE found 328, Scielo

found 2, and ScienceDirect found 1437 articles.

The selection of studies was divided into four

steps. In the ﬁrst step, we imported the BibTeX ﬁles

into the tool StArt

, which automatically identiﬁed

241 duplicate articles. They were rejected according

to the EC6, resulting in 2495 non-duplicated articles.

239 articles were published before 2016 or did not

have a publication date; all were rejected according to

the EC4. The StArt tool assigns a score to each ar-

ticle according to the number of occurrences of key-

words in the title (5 points), abstract (3 points), and

keywords (2 points); 2051 articles with less than 15

points were rejected according to the EC7.

In the second step, we read the titles and abstracts

of the selected articles. 134 articles were rejected ac-

cording to the EC2, resulting in 71 articles were se-

lected at the end of this stage.

In the third step, we read all articles and excluded

36 according to criteria EC1, EC2, EC3, and EC5. At

the end of the process, 35 articles were selected.

In the fourth step, the snowballing process was

carried out, a technique used to identify additional

studies based on the references of the identiﬁed ar-

ticles. This technique consists of backward and for-

ward snowballing. Backward Snowballing analyzes

the reference list to identify new articles to include

in the SLR. Forward snowballing refers to identifying

new articles by analyzing the list of articles citing the

article being examined. We applied this technique to

the initial 35 initial articles.

Each article was evaluated according to the same

process as steps 1, 2, and 3, considering their rele-

vance and adequacy to the inclusion and exclusion

criteria previously established for this research. As

a result, 28 articles were considered relevant after the

snowballing process.

The research comprised 63 articles (listed in the

Review References section), including the 28 iden-

tiﬁed by snowballing added to the 35 selected ones.

These articles formed the basis of the review and were

used for full reading, data extraction, analysis, and

composition of the ﬁnal research results. The results

are described below.

State of the Art through SLR - available at

http://lapes.dc.ufscar.br

Effective People Management Practices for Software Project Success

207

3 RESULTS

3.1 Problems

The identiﬁed problems were categorized into 9

groups based on their similarity, representing essen-

tial aspects of people management.

Communication (16%): The wrong choice of

communication tools can lead to misunderstandings

and breakdowns (Shameem et al., 2020) (Margareth

and Mulyanto, 2021). In big teams, communica-

tion can be difﬁcult, which leads to low frequency

(de Magalh

aes, 2017)(Wang et al., 2018)(Bass,

2016)(Machuca-Villegas et al., 2022)(Shameem

et al., 2020). Providing adequate feedback is also

crucial to prevent demotivation and burnout in the

development team (Stylianou and Andreou, 2016).

Motivation (16%): Motivation is the desire to

work and inﬂuences performance (Franc¸a et al.,

2020). Lack of motivation threatens team develop-

ment (Garc

ıa et al., 2017) and affects productivity and

effectiveness (Fatema and Sakib, 2017). Autonomy

and feedback, employment policies, work-life bal-

ance, common technical challenges, innovation, re-

wards, good management, adequate working condi-

tions, work involvement with others, and quality of

work generated are some factors that affect motivation

(de Magalh

aes, 2017)(Bass et al., 2018). Low-quality

work and products and high turnover are some effects

of low motivation (Bass et al., 2018).

Technical skills and knowledge (16%): The tech-

nical factors affecting productivity in software de-

velopment include programming language and tools,

software size, complexity, and product quality (Meyer

et al., 2017). Selecting people with the right technical

skills for a project is a complex task in project man-

agement (Fatema and Sakib, 2017). Technical knowl-

edge is insufﬁcient; the lack of skill in applying that

knowledge negatively impacts software delivery (Ni-

gar, 2017)(da Cunha et al., 2016). Team stability is

positively related to developing skills and technical

knowledge (Kula et al., 2021).

Geographical aspects (11%): Outsourcing plays

a vital role in the productivity of development teams,

especially for large global organizations. It can be

categorized into onshore (same territory) and offshore

(geographically remote) outsourcing (Bass, 2016).

Offshore outsourcing can help build a presence in

emerging markets while beneﬁting from lower costs,

but cultural and language differences can negatively

impact team performance and communication (Qah-

tani, 2020)(Shameem et al., 2020). This can lead to

delays and difﬁculties in areas such as collaboration

(Bass et al., 2018) and training (Britto et al., 2019).

Team Stability (11%): Teams with low turnover

and high familiarity contribute to on-time deliver-

ies by improving coordination and adaptability (Kula

et al., 2021). Employee turnover is a challenge that

managers need to mitigate due to its negative impact

on productivity and quality (Kula et al., 2021). Low

motivation (Bass et al., 2018) and the nature of the

work performed (Bass et al., 2018) are some factors

that contribute to high turnover rates.

Commitment (9%): Professionals with high com-

mitment and technical expertise tend to identify and

assess risks better, increasing the chances of project

success(Machuca-Villegas et al., 2022)(Kula et al.,

2021). Managers perceive greater productivity in

committed professionals who combine focus and

proactivity with timely and quality task deliveries

(Oliveira et al., 2016)(Machuca-Villegas et al., 2022).

Customer involvement is crucial in agile projects

throughout the lifecycle (Tam et al., 2020).

Job Satisfaction (9%): Franc¸a et al. (2020) found

that job satisfaction increases employee performance

and retention. Factors contributing to job satisfaction

include personal and professional growth, recogni-

tion, opportunities, salary, and relationships with col-

leagues (de Magalh

aes, 2017).

Focus (7%): Developers who prefer to work on

a single task at a time are called focused developers

(Meyer et al., 2017). Constant focus changes can neg-

atively impact productivity, and the state of ”ﬂow”

developers desire (Meyer et al., 2017). Small con-

text changes lasting less than 3 minutes, like running

a short script, do not disconnect developers from their

previous tasks (Kohl et al., 2020).

Autonomy (5%): Team autonomy in deﬁning and

assigning responsibilities signiﬁcantly impacts indi-

viduals’ productivity and motivation during software

development (Machuca-Villegas et al., 2022). While

some argue that task assignment should be optimized

through mathematical models, others believe self-

management and team-deﬁned responsibilities lead

to better results(Song et al., 2020)(Chiang and Lin,

2020).

3.2 Documentation of Practices

Primary studies on people management practices in

software development teams were analyzed, and 16

practices were documented. Subsequently, a descrip-

tion was formulated for each practice identiﬁed.

P01 - Use of Agile Practices: The use of ag-

ile methods, such as XP and Scrum, promotes ef-

ﬁciency and adaptability in the project. These

practices can be implemented through training in

agile methods to adopt an agile mindset. Ref-

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208

erences: (Destefanis et al., 2016)(Britto et al.,

2016)(Iqbal et al., 2019)(Ram

ırez-Mora and Ok-

taba, 2017)(Franc¸a et al., 2020)(Qahtani, 2020)(Bass,

2016)(Shameem et al., 2020)(Tam et al., 2020)(

Angel

Vega-Vel

azquez et al., 2018)

P02 - Assess personality traits and soft skills:

Assessing personality traits and soft skills ensures

the correct assignment of members to projects, con-

sidering technical speciﬁcities and individuals’ ca-

pacity. This practice increases productivity and job

satisfaction and can be implemented through per-

sonality questionnaires, performance tests (consist-

ing of performing speciﬁc tasks such as writing com-

puter code), or direct observation in a real situa-

tion. References: (Caulo et al., 2021)(C

ardenas-

Castro et al., 2019)(Meyer et al., 2017)(Stylianou

and Andreou, 2016)(Yilmaz et al., 2017)(Vishnub-

hotla et al., 2020)(Anderson et al., 2018)(Licorish and

MacDonell, 2021)(Fritzsch et al., 2023)(Cunha et al.,

2021)

P03 - Implement Onboarding Checklist: The

creation of onboarding checklists assists in standard-

izing and ensuring the complete integration of new

members into the team, reducing the acclimatization

time and increasing efﬁciency. References: (Britto

et al., 2019)(Britto et al., 2016)(Britto et al., 2020)

P04 - Create Channels and Promote Open

Communication: Open communication and ﬂexibil-

ity boost team efﬁciency. Regular meetings, online

tools, and an inclusive environment help achieve this.

References: (Dangmei, 2017), (Fatema and Sakib,

2017), (Bass et al., 2018)(Shen et al., 2018)(Xia et al.,

2017)(Hidayati et al., 2020) (Ram

ırez-Mora and Ok-

taba, 2017)

P05 - Create minimal schedule: A minimal

schedule helps teams focus on critical tasks and

avoid delays while saving time and costs. Proper

resource allocation considers individual and project

factors, minimizing the need for changes during

the project. References: (Maenhout and Van-

houcke, 2016)(Song et al., 2020)(Chiang and Lin,

2020)(Nigar, 2017)(Shen et al., 2020)(

Angel Vega-

Vel

azquez et al., 2018)(Paredes-Valverde et al.,

2018a)(Zapotecas-Mart

ınez et al., 2020)(Mamatha

and Suma, 2021)

P06 - Create a job description for hiring: Clear

job descriptions prevent incorrect hiring and ensure

the selection of suitable professionals for each role.

They also save time and resources in hiring and in-

crease employee satisfaction. Implementing them re-

quires the help of human resources specialists and

feedback from team members. References: (Nastiti

and Setyohadi, 2020)(Fritzsch et al., 2023)

P07 - Provide feedback to the team: Feed-

back is crucial for effective project team manage-

ment. It helps improve team members’ morale and

work quality. A trusting and respectful environment

is critical, where feedback is viewed as an oppor-

tunity for growth, not personal criticism. Regular

feedback meetings and peer evaluations can be help-

ful. Constructive feedback should be speciﬁc and ob-

jective, provide clear examples, be behavioral rather

than personal, and include suggestions for improve-

ment. Any team member can provide feedback re-

spectfully to help the team improve. References:

(Britto et al., 2016)(Zaouga et al., 2019)(da Cunha

et al., 2016)(Dzvonyar and Bruegge, 2018)

P08 - Deﬁning team size: The ideal team size

depends on various factors, such as project complex-

ity, team experience, and task nature. Increasing team

size can improve efﬁciency, but only up to a point. Af-

ter that, coordination costs grow exponentially, lead-

ing to decreased efﬁciency. References: (Wang et al.,

2018)(Scott et al., 2020)

P09 - Challenge the team to learn new skills:

Managers should encourage their team to acquire new

skills through training, workshops, and incentives

for continuous education. It promotes professional

growth and adaptability and increases the team’s com-

petitiveness and ﬂexibility. References: (Santos

et al., 2016b)(C

ardenas-Castro et al., 2019)(Dzvonyar

and Bruegge, 2018)

P10 - Practicing Open Management: Visible

project indicators promote transparency and align

goals. It increases awareness and allows proactive ad-

dressing of problems. Use physical or online tools

and make measurements as a team to work towards

the same goal. References: (Dangmei, 2017)(Fatema

and Sakib, 2017)(Destefanis et al., 2016)(da Cunha

et al., 2016)(Shameem et al., 2020)

P11 - Identify and manage team compe-

tencies: Mapping the necessary and existing

knowledge in the team allows for effective

competency management, contributing to the

project’s efﬁciency. This practice can be imple-

mented through periodic competency assessments

and personalized training plans. References:

(Dangmei, 2017)(Hidayati et al., 2020)(Paredes-

Valverde et al., 2018b)(Angelis, 2019)(Meyer et al.,

2017)(Zaouga et al., 2019)(Paredes-Valverde et al.,

2018a)(Bakanova and Shikov, 2020)

P12 - Create a career and succession plans: Im-

plementing career and succession plans with training

can retain talent, ensure project continuity, and iden-

tify potential successors. It involves individual meet-

ings, development plans, mentorship, transition plans,

and succession tests. Companies should identify mul-

tiple successors for each critical position and regu-

Effective People Management Practices for Software Project Success

209

larly review and adjust plans to align with company

needs and employee growth. References: (Nico-

laescu et al., 2020)(Trinkenreich et al., 2023)

P13 - Assemble a heterogeneous team: Het-

erogeneous teams approach problems differently and

ﬁnd practical solutions. A diverse recruitment pol-

icy values gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orienta-

tion, and age. Managers should foster collabora-

tion, idea exchange, and learning among team mem-

bers to achieve common goals. References: (Xia

et al., 2017)Canedo and Santos (2019)(Nastiti and Se-

tyohadi, 2020)(Cunha et al., 2021)

P14 - Organizing training : Ongoing training

improves skills and project efﬁciency. Internal or ex-

ternal programs and online learning are options. For-

mal training, work-based learning, and mentoring by

experienced developers are recommended. Encour-

age professionals to become mentors and offer ca-

reer development opportunities and recognition. Cre-

ating a learning environment and issuing certiﬁcates

can recognize employee performance and skills. Ref-

erences: (Fatema and Sakib, 2017)(Shahzad et al.,

2017)(Britto et al., 2020)

P15 - Job Rotation: Team rotation can

be done in two ways: job-to-job and project-to-

project rotation. The former allows members to

acquire new skills and knowledge through well-

structured programs, while the latter provides new

perspectives and prevents stagnation. The ideal

frequency of rotation should balance new chal-

lenges with work stability. References: (Santos

et al., 2016b)(Santos et al., 2016a)(de Magalh

aes,

2017)(Santos, 2017a)(Govindaras et al., 2023) (San-

tos, 2017b)(Dzvonyar and Bruegge, 2018)

P16 - Use team performance indicators: The

use of key performance indicators (KPIs) allows mea-

suring and monitoring team performance, promoting

continuous improvement. This practice can be im-

plemented using project tracking software and perfor-

mance analysis tools. References: (Oliveira et al.,

2016)(Cunha et al., 2021)(Nicolaescu et al., 2020)

3.3 Survey to Validate Practices

Software professionals from various proﬁles validated

the practices through a questionnaire, including the

areas of management (54.8%), development (25.8%),

analysis (12.9%), and quality (6.5%).

The questionnaire consists of 16 sections of ques-

tions, each section related to a speciﬁc practice, con-

taining the description of the practice, a question

about the general relevance of the practice, and ques-

tions about the relevance of the practice for each of

the correlated target problems identiﬁed. Each ques-

tion has four response options: (a) Not relevant (0

points), (b) Slightly relevant (1 point), (c) Very rele-

vant (2 points), and (d) Absolutely relevant (3 points).

The relevance of practice is the sum of the relevance

for all participants divided by the number of partic-

ipants multiplied by 3 (maximum score), as demon-

strated in the formula below:

Relevance =

∑

p=1

Relevance

n × 3

The consolidated results of the practice’s general rel-

evance and solving a speciﬁc target problem are dis-

played in Figure 2.

Figure 2: General relevance of the practice and relevance

for solving each associated problem.

4 CONCLUSIONS

This study investigated people management practices

in software development projects, aiming to compile

best practices to be used as a reference resource by

researchers and professionals involved in software de-

velopment projects.

A set of practices was then developed and sub-

mitted for validation by 31 software professionals

through questionnaires. It was possible to assign a nu-

merical relevance and, from this, classify the practices

as more or less relevant. The analysis of the responses

from the software professionals revealed valuable in-

sights about the relevance of the implementation and

impact of these practices.

The results offer guidelines for implement-

ing management practices in software development

projects. Each practice, with its particularities, con-

tributes uniquely to the project’s success and the

ICEIS 2024 - 26th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems

210

team’s satisfaction. However, before generalizing the

ﬁndings, it is essential to consider the study’s limita-

tions, such as the variability in the professionals’ re-

sponses and the speciﬁcity of the software context.

In future work, we intend to quantify the advan-

tages of people management practices in software de-

velopment projects. To achieve this, we will create

a model that measures the effectiveness of proposed

practices using key performance indicators (KPIs).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We thank the Brazilian Army and its Army Strategic

Program ASTROS for the ﬁnancial support through

the SIS-ASTROS GMF project (898347/2020).

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