Software People and Software Quality : A qualitative, exploratory research on how workforce management can enhance the product quality in software companies

The aim of this work is to investigate how to address the management of individuals in a software company to positively affect the quality of the software product. The basic idea is that the better people are managed, the better is the quality of the product and, consequently, the more the customer is satisfied. This paper goes across the literature to offer an overview on some main aspects of the management of knowledge: reasons for managing knowledge, effective strategies, adopted methods. The management of a software company is also examined: models of software development processes are described, methodologies for processes’ assessment and to guide improvements are presented, approaches to people management are deepened. Particular attention is drawn to software quality, how it can be defined and measured and its relationships with both the development process and the user/customer perspective (in terms of needs and satisfaction). Within the literature very few are the explicit references to the relationship between software quality and software people, because of the opposite attitudes towards this concept: it’s something taken for granted or else not considered at all. For this reason, a questionnaire has been designed to collect information on this subject. The questionnaire has been submitted to several software companies and the answers have been analyzed. Furthermore, interviews to managers within the software development area have been arranged to gather more exhaustive information . Consequently, this work provides a description of how individual competencies, team skills and people’s involvement in software development are managed in some real cases. Moreover, this project shows how much companies actually understand that effectively managing their people affects the quality of their software products. Conclusions on how software companies may improve their people management in order to enhance the quality of their software are drawn