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Professor Helen Sharp

Profile summary

Professional biography

Helen completed her undergraduate studies in Mathematics, and postgraduate studies in Computer Science at University College London before joining a software house in London. As a programmer, she developed and maintained software systems for a range of clients including City Traders, Oil Companies and Publishing Companies. In 1987 she came to the Open University as a temporary lecturer in Computing. Between 1987 and 2008, she held several posts at the OU and elsewhere including City University London, CTC Trust and various publishing companies and architectural practices. Since 2008 she has been Professor of Software Engineering in the School of Computing and Communications. Helen holds a Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, is a Fellow of the HEA, a Chartered IT Professional and a Chartered Engineer.

Helen’s professional activities have ranged across several disciplines of Computer Science including HCI, Software Engineering and Project Management, and have reached out to other related disciplines such as Education and Design Studies. This diversity has been reflected in Helen’s Teaching and Research interests, but a constant in both has been the desire to engage with practice – to understand and try to improve practice.

In 2014 Helen became Associate Dean for Research, Scholarship and Enterprise in the Maths and Computing Faculty, and in 2016 was appointed as Associate Dean for Research and Scholarship in the newly-formed STEM Faculty.

 

Research interests

Leveraging her expertise in both HCI and Software Engineering, Helen’s research focuses on the study of professional software practice in industry, specifically the human and social aspects of software development. This focus on human factors has led her to adopt qualitative techniques and theories from other disciplines including distributed cognition, design reflective practice, interaction analysis and technological frames. She was a founding organiser of the popular CHASE workshops held in conjunction with ICSE every year since 2008, and has been a persistent advocate for developer-centred research since the 1980s. Recent activities include:

  • Starting in 2020 Helen will be researching socio-technical resilience of the software development environment, under EPSRC’s People at the Heart of Software Engineering initiative. This project will be run in partnership with University of Lancaster and the Software Sustainability Institute.
  • Funded by NCSC, a team of researchers has been studying how to improve the security of software systems by focusing on the motivation profile of developers. This has resulted in a set of practitioner-focused packs designed to sensitise developers to security issues. These and other project outputs are available from motivatingjenny.org.
  • Since 2013, Helen has been working with researchers from UCLAN and the OU, partnered with the Agile Business Consortium and a variety of industrial collaborators to study agility in practice. Initially focused on software development teams, the notion of agility is being applied in a wide range of sectors and across the enterprise as a whole. The work in this project is available at agileresearchnetwork.org.

Helen supervises PhD students in the areas of HCI, ACI (animal-computer interaction) and software engineering, with a key focus on integration with practice.

Teaching interests

Helen's main teaching interests are in Interaction Design. She is the joint author of one of the leading international textbooks on HCI, Interaction Design: beyond human-computer interaction (id-book.com) which has been translated into 7 languages, most recently Portuguese (for Brazil) and Japanese; it is now in its 5th edition. She has been involved in HCI modules at the OU since the early 1990s, including chairing production and presentation of the undergraduate module M364 between 2003 and 2016, and its delivery to over 4000 students in Botswana as part of a computer science programme of study. Helen has also contributed to undergraduate and postgraduate modules in software engineering, object-oriented development and project management.

Impact and engagement

Helen undertakes a wide range of activities within the community:

  • Member of EPSRC’s Strategic Advisory Network (SAN) and its peer review college. She has chaired institutional review panels for EPSRC, been asked to comment on research council reports and reviewed many research applications from the UK and abroad.
  • Member of evaluation committees in Sweden (Scientific Advisory Board for the Industrial Excellence Center for Embedded Applications Software Engineering (EASE, http://ease.cs.lth.se) and Canada (Chair and then member of the Advisory Board for NSERC’s SurfNet programme (http://www.nsercsurfnet.org/), and was a Panel member for the Software Audit and Advisory Review for Diamond Light (Harwell Campus) in October 2012.
  • Served on the programme committees for a range of international conferences, most recently co-chairing the Software Engineering in Practice track for the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) in 2019.
  • Associate editor for IEEE Software and IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, and member of editorial boards for journals in Computer Science Education and Empirical Software Engineering.

 

External collaborations

Helen works closely with practitioners in industry as well as researchers in other universities across the globe.

Research groups

NameTypeParent Unit
Centre for Research in Computing (CRC)CentreFaculty of Mathematics, Computing and Technology

 

Externally funded projects

Agile Business Consortium research grant - 2022-2025
RoleStart dateEnd dateFunding source
Co-investigator01 Jan 202331 Dec 2025ABC Ltd Agile Business Consortium Ltd

The Agile Research Network was formed in 2013 as a collaboration between experienced academics at the Open University and the University of Central Lancashire who all had a long-standing interest in understanding more about agile approaches in the IT workplace. Another common interest was our focus on understanding practice and the value of sharing research findings with practitioners. Our strap line, Bridging the gap between research and practice, neatly sums up our aims. From the beginning we have worked closely with, and been funded by, the DSDM/ABC Consortium. This collaboration has brought an objective, research-led perspective on Agile practices to ABC, its members, and the wider business agility community of practitioners. We conduct multiple research studies, publish widely, and gain international recognition for our work. Our purpose is to: • Respond to the need for case studies and research by agile practitioners • Be a critical friend to the organisations we work with • Bring a different perspective • Bring rigour through academic research • Publish research • Bring the practice perspective into research conversations • Communicate about agile research with different audiences

Empirical Data-Driven Bug Localisation in Software Development
RoleStart dateEnd dateFunding source
Co-investigator01 Jun 202131 May 2025Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd

In software engineering, developers must respond quickly to the change requests raised by product customers. For example, when a bug report arrives, developers need to locate relevant code to patch the bug. External to the product teams, however, customers can only describe the bug using their own (natural) language, with limited understanding of the software. Such a description may not reflect the developers’ rich experience and their deeper understanding of the software architecture, design, data structures, algorithms, etc. Hence substantial amount of time must be wasted on triaging, from a vast repository, where to start the investigation. It is like searching needles in a haystack [1]. To tackle this problem, existing work on bug localisation employs various heuristics in the natural language description of bugs and code to achieve state-of-the-art performance on information retrieval metrics, such as precision/recall and top-K [1]. Precision measures how many pieces of recommended code are indeed related to an average bug report; recall measures how many pieces of code known relevant to a bug report have been recommended; and top-K measures how many out of the K recommended pieces of code are relevant to a bug report. However, existing research methods developed since Zhou et al. [2] are competing against a benchmark of only 4~6 medium-sized open-source Java projects mostly taken from Eclipse development. Although various information retrieval approaches have been attempted, and compared on top of this benchmark, there is a lot of uncertainty as to how they apply to Huawei’s contexts. In this project, we will tackle these challenges with practicability and adoptability in mind.

Socio-technical resilience in software development (STRIDE)
RoleStart dateEnd dateFunding source
Lead01 Jul 202030 Jun 2024EPSRC Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

The project will investigate resilience and automation in the socio-technical system that supports software development, which includes people , technical infrastructure, processes and artefacts . Recognising that users are developers and developers are users in different contexts, we’d like to investigate two communities that represent different points along that dimension: commercial software development community and professional end user development community.

ABC Ltd (Formerly DSDM) 7
RoleStart dateEnd dateFunding source
Lead01 Feb 201931 Jul 2022ABC Ltd Agile Business Consortium Ltd

The Agile Research Network has been running since the beginning of 2013, with regular funding from Agile Business Consortium (formerly DSDM Consortium), plus expenses and support from industrial partners. The project has three main aims: to generate original, applied research by explicating the detail of the challenges experienced by Agile software practitioners: to bring existing research (ours and others') to the attention of practice, and test its applicability: and through the first two, to bridge the gap between research and practice in software development. Throughout this work dissemination with the collaborator organization, to researchers, and to the wider practitioner community is achieved through publications and conference activities. Further details of the approach, collaborators, conference and activities, white papers and research outputs are available from agilersearchnetwork.org.

Evaluation of online research portals and repositories (DFID)
RoleStart dateEnd dateFunding source
Lead01 Jan 201506 Jan 2016Mott MacDonald Ltd

This project involves evaluating the usability and effectiveness of DFID research portals. DFID has proposed a Theory of Change Model which is a guiding framework for conducting evaluations. Te primary purpose of the evaluation is to “evaluate the success and value for money of DFID-funded work to communicate research online”. For example, the findings in relation to Eldis will provide evidence on the performance of the Global Open Knowledge Hub programme at outcome level. The findings will also inform DFID decision-making about its future portfolio. The secondary purpose of this evaluation is to “strengthen the evidence base that supports research communication in the interests of international development”. The aim, therefore, is to investigate robustly the information needs and information seeking behaviour on the internet of development decision-makers and related actors, as well as the extent to which needs are met by current portals and repositories.

Novice interaction designers' behaviour in different cultures. (XC-10-070-HS)
RoleStart dateEnd dateFunding source
Lead01 Oct 201131 Mar 2013LEVERHULME The Leverhulme Trust

In this project we will study the design activities of UK and Botswana students through constrained tasks and longitudinal observation, identifying differences and suggesting techniques to encourage and support the development of creative, reflective and independent design strategies that are sympathetic to the African context. We will compare the design strategies adopted by UK and Botswana students, and will suggest simple techniques that Botswana students may be taught to encourage and develop reflective thinking. This will have an immediate impact on the OU’s current module as well as future design modules. With the support of Botho College’s senior staff we will also disseminate our findings to educational policy makers within Botswana as a first step in producing a more practical and lasting impact on interaction design education in Southern Africa.

Publications

Agile human resource management: A systematic mapping study (2024)
Moh'd, Shaima'; Gregory, Peggy; Sharp, Helen and Barroca, Leonor
German Journal of Human Resource Management: Zeitschrift für Personalforschung ((early access))


Introduction to special issue on Agile UX: challenges, successes and barriers to improvement (2023-06)
Schön, Eva Maria; da Silva, Tiago Silva; Hinderks, Andreas; Sharp, Helen and Thomaschewski, Jörg
Information and Software Technology, 158, Article 107193


What do software startups need from UX work? (2023-05-13)
Zaina, Luciana; Choma, Joelma; Barroca, Leonor; Sharp, Helen; Machado, Leticia and de Souza, Cleidson
Empirical Software Engineering, 28, Article 80(3)


Security Responses in Software Development (2023-04-26)
Lopez, Tamara; Sharp, Helen; Bandara, Arosha; Thein, Tun; Levine, Mark and Nuseibeh, Bashar
ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, 32, Article 64(3)


Tensions in Organisations Transforming to Agility (2022-12)
Strode, Diane; Sharp, Helen; Barroca, Leonor; Gregory, Peggy and Taylor, Katie
IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, 69(6) (pp. 3572-3583)


An Onboarding Model for Integrating Newcomers into Agile Project Teams (2022-03)
Gregory, Peggy; Strode, Diane; Sharp, Helen and Barroca, Leonor
Information and Software Technology, 143, Article 106792


The Case for Adaptive Security Interventions (2022-01)
Rauf, Irum; Petre, Marian; Tun, Thein; Lopez, Tamara; Lunn, Paul; Van der Linden, Dirk; Towse, John; Sharp, Helen; Levine, Mark; Rashid, Awais and Nuseibeh, Bashar
ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, 31, Article 9(1)


Bumps in the Code: Error Handling during Software Development (2021-05)
Lopez, Tamara; Sharp, Helen; Petre, Marian and Nuseibeh, Bashar
IEEE Software, 38(3) (pp. 26-34)


UX information in the daily work of an agile team: A distributed cognition analysis (2021-03)
Zaina, Luciana A. M.; Sharp, Helen and Barroca, Leonor
International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 147, Article 102574


Eine Elefantenperspektive [An Elephant Perspective] (2020-10-26)
French, Fiona; Mancini, Clara and Sharp, Helen
Tierstudien(18) (pp. 111-122)


Socio-cultural factors and capacity building in Interaction Design: results of a video diary study in Botswana (2020-03)
Sharp, Helen; Lotz, Nicole; Mbayi-Kwelagobe, Letsema; Woodroffe, Mark; Rajah, Dino and Turugare, Ranganai
International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 135, Article 102375


Introduction to the special issue on software engineering in practice (2020-03)
Bishop, Judith; Cooper, Kendra M. L.; Sharp, Helen and Whalen, Michael
Software: Practice and Experience, 50(3) (pp. 187-188)


Motivation and Satisfaction of Software Engineers (2020-02-01)
França, César; da Silva, Fabio Q. B. and Sharp, Helen
IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 46(2) (pp. 118-140)


Taking the Middle Path: Learning about Security Through Online Social Interaction (2020-01-01)
Lopez, Tamara; Tun, Thein; Bandara, Arosha; Levine, Mark; Nuseibeh, Bashar and Sharp, Helen
IEEE Software, 37(1) (pp. 25-30)


Challenges for interaction design education in the South: a case study of Botswana (2020-01)
Lotz, Nicole and Sharp, Helen
Journal of International Development, 32(1) (pp. 62-84)


Improving Requirements-Test Alignment by Prescribing Practices that Mitigate Communication Gaps (2019-08-01)
Bjarnason, Elizabeth; Sharp, Helen and Regnell, Bjorn
Empirical Software Engineering, 24(4) (pp. 2364-2409)


High tech cognitive and acoustic enrichment for captive elephants (2018-04-15)
French, Fiona; Mancini, Clara and Sharp, Helen
Journal of Neuroscience Methods, 300 (pp. 173-183)


The role of distances in requirements communication: a case study (2017-03)
Bjarnason, Elizabeth and Sharp, Helen
Requirements Engineering, 22(1) (pp. 1-26)


The influence of cognitive style, design setting and cultural background on sketch-based ideation by novice interaction designers (2017)
Lotz, Nicole and Sharp, Helen
The Design Journal, 20(3) (pp. 333-356)


The challenges that challenge: Engaging with agile practitioners’ concerns (2016-09-30)
Gregory, Peggy; Barroca, Leonor; Sharp, Helen; Deshpande, Advait and Taylor, Katie
Information and Software Technology, 77 (pp. 92-104)


The Role of Ethnographic Studies in Empirical Software Engineering (2016-08-01)
Sharp, Helen; Dittrich, Yvonne and de Souza, Cleidson
IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 42(8) (pp. 786-804)


The future of e-infrastructures (2015-05-01)
Segal, Judith; Petre, Marian and Sharp, Helen
Computing in Science & Engineering, 17(3) (pp. 78-84)


Bridging the gap between research and agile practice: an evolutionary model (2015-04-09)
Barroca, Leonor; Sharp, Helen; Salah, Dina; Taylor, Katie and Gregory, Peggy
International Journal of System Assurance Engineering and Management, 9(2) (pp. 323-334)


Crowdsourcing scientific software documentation: a case study of the NumPy documentation project (2015-02)
Pawlik, Aleksandra; Segal, Judith; Petre, Marian and Sharp, Helen
Computing in Science & Engineering, 17(1) (pp. 28-36)


Knowledge transfer in pair programming: an in-depth analysis (2015-01-31)
Plonka, Laura; Sharp, Helen; van der Linden, Janet and Dittrich, Yvonne
International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 73(1) (pp. 66-78)


Does involving users in software development really influence system success? (2013-11)
Abelein, Ulrike; Sharp, Helen and Paech, Barbara
IEEE Software, 30(6) (pp. 17-23)


What's the evidence for Lean? (2012-09)
Dyba, Tore and Sharp, Helen
IEEE Software, 29(5) (pp. 19-21)


Understanding conflicts in Agile adoption through technological frames (2012-06)
Abdelnour-Nocera, Jose and Sharp, Helen
International Journal of Sociotechnology and Knowledge Development, 4(2) (pp. 29-45)


User experience design and agile development: managing cooperation through articulation work (2011)
Ferreira, Jennifer; Sharp, Helen and Robinson, Hugh
Software: Practice and Experience, 41(9) (pp. 963-974)


The top 10 burning research questions from practitioners (2010-10)
Freudenberg, SallyAnn and Sharp, Helen
IEEE Software, 27(5) (pp. 8-9)


The emergence of object-oriented technology: the role of community (2009-05)
Robinson, Hugh and Sharp, Helen
Behaviour & Information Technology, 28(3) (pp. 211-222)


A systematic review of theory use in studies investigating the motivations of software engineers (2009-05)
Hall, Tracy; Baddoo, Nathan; Beecham, Sarah; Robinson, Hugh and Sharp, Helen
ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, 18, Article 10(3)


The role of physical artefacts in agile software development: Two complementary perspectives (2009-01)
Sharp, Helen; Robinson, Hugh and Petre, Marian
Interacting with Computers, 21(1-2) (pp. 108-116)


Models of motivation in software engineering (2009)
Sharp, Helen; Baddoo, Nathan; Beecham, Sarah; Hall, Tracy and Robinson, Hugh
Information and Software Technology, 51(1) (pp. 219-233)


Collaboration and co-ordination in mature eXtreme programming teams (2008-10)
Sharp, Helen and Robinson, Hugh
International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 66(7) (pp. 506-518)


Motivation in software engineering: a systematic literature review (2008-08)
Beecham, Sarah; Baddoo, Nathan; Hall, Tracy; Robinson, Hugh and Sharp, Helen
Information and Software Technology, 50(9-10) (pp. 860-878)


What do we know about developer motivation? (2008-07)
Hall, Tracy; Sharp, Helen; Beecham, Sarah; Baddoo, Nathan and Robinson, Hugh
IEEE Software, 25(4) (pp. 92-94)


Ethnographically-informed empirical studies of software practice (2007-06)
Robinson, Hugh; Segal, Judith and Sharp, Helen
Information and Software Technology, 49(6) (pp. 540-551)


An approach to the evaluation of usefulness as a social construct using technological frames (2007-04)
Nocera, Jose Abdelnour; Dunckley, Lynne and Sharp, Helen
International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 22(1-2) (pp. 153-172)


Complexity through combination: an account of knitwear design (2006-03)
Sharp, Helen; Petre, Marian and Johnson, Jeffrey
Design Studies, 27(2) (pp. 183-222)


Using metaphor to analyse qualitative data: Vulcans and Humans in software development (2005-07)
Sharp, Helen; Woodman, Mark and Hovenden, Fiona
Empirical Software Engineering, 10(3) (343 -365)


An Ethnographic study of XP practice (2004-12)
Sharp, Helen and Robinson, Hugh
Empirical Software Engineering, 9(4) (pp. 353-375)


Tensions around the adoption and evolution of software quality management systems: a discourse analytic approach (2004-08)
Sharp, Helen; Woodman, Mark and Hovenden, Fiona
International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 61(2) (pp. 219-236)


Interaction Design: beyond human-computer interaction (6th edition) (2023-03)
Rogers, Yvonne; Sharp, Helen and Preece, Jenny
ISBN : 978-1-119-90109-9 | Publisher : John Wiley & Sons


Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction (5th edition) (2019)
Sharp, Helen; Rogers, Yvonne and Preece, Jenny
ISBN : 978-1-119-54725-9 | Publisher : Wiley


Interaction Design: Beyond human-computer interaction (4th ed) (2015-02-06)
Preece, Jenny; Rogers, Yvonne and Sharp, Helen
ISBN : 978-1-119-02075-2 | Publisher : John Wiley & Sons | Published : Chichester


Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction (3rd ed) (2011-04)
Rogers, Yvonne; Sharp, Helen and Preece, Jenny
ISBN : 978-0-470-66576-3 | Publisher : Wiley | Published : Chichester


Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction. Second Edition (2007-01)
Sharp, Helen; Rogers, Yvonne and Preece, Jenny
ISBN : 978-0-470-01866-8 | Publisher : John Wiley | Published : UK


Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction (2002-01)
Rogers, Yvonne and Sharp, Helen
Preece, Jenny; Rogers, Yvonne and Sharp, Helen eds.
ISBN : 471492787 | Publisher : John Wiley


Humans in the Loop: People at the Heart of Systems Development (2024-01)
Sharp, Helen
In: Werthner, Hannes; Ghezzi, Carlo; Kramer, Jeff; Nida-Rümelin, Julian; Nuseibeh, Bashar; Prem, Erich and Stanger, Allison eds. Introduction to Digital Humanism: A Textbook (pp. 359-371)
ISBN : 978-3-031-45304-5 | Publisher : Springer, Cham


Collaboration, communication and coordination in Agile software development practice (2010)
Robinson, Hugh and Sharp, Helen
In: Mistrík, Ivan; Grundy, John; Hoek, André and Whitehead, Jim eds. Collaborative Software Engineering (pp. 93-108)
ISBN : 978-3-642-10293-6 | Publisher : Springer | Published : Berlin/Heidelberg


Three ‘c’s of agile practice: collaboration, coordination and communication (2010)
Sharp, Helen and Robinson, Hugh
In: Dingsøyr, Torgeir; Dybå, Tore and Moe, Nils Brede eds. Agile Software Development: Current Research and Future Directions (pp. 61-85)
ISBN : 978-3-642-12574-4 | Publisher : Springer | Published : Berlin


Towards a framework for integrating agile development and user-centred design (2006-06)
Chamberlain, Stephanie; Sharp, Helen and Maiden, Neil
In: Abrahamsson, Pekka; Marchesi, Michele and Succi, Giancarlo eds. Extreme Programming and Agile Processes in Software Engineering: 7th International Conference, XP 2006, Oulu, Finland, June 17-22, 2006. Proceedings (pp. 143-153)
ISBN : 3540350942 | Publisher : Springer Berlin


A distributed cognition account of mature XP teams (2006)
Sharp, Helen and Robinson, Hugh
In: Abrahamsson, P.; Marchesi, M. and Succi, G. eds. Extreme Programming and Agile Processes in Software Engineering. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (pp. 1-10)
ISBN : 978-3-540-35094-1 | Publisher : Springer | Published : Berlin, Germany


The type of evidence produced by empirical software engineers (2005)
Segal, Judith; Grinyer, Antony and Sharp, Helen
In: Proceedings of the 2005 workshop on Realising evidence-based software engineering (pp. 1-4)
ISBN : 159593121X | Publisher : ACM Press | Published : New York, NY, USA


The social side of technical practices (2005)
Robinson, Hugh and Sharp, Helen
In: Baumeister, Hubert; Marchesi, Michele and Holcombe, Mike eds. Extreme Programming and Agile Processes in Software Engineering: Proceedings of the 6th International Conference, XP 2005, Sheffield, UK, June 18-23, 2005. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (3556) (pp. 100-108)
ISBN : 3-540-26277-6 | Publisher : Springer | Published : Berlin, Germany


The characteristics of XP teams (2004)
Robinson, Hugh and Sharp, Helen
In: Eckstein, Jutta and Baumeister, Hubert eds. Extreme Programming and Agile Processes in Software Engineering. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (3092) (pp. 135-147)
ISBN : 3540221379 | Publisher : Springer | Published : Berlin, Germany


The case for empirical studies of the practice of software development (2004)
Robinson, Hugh; Segal, Judith and Sharp, Helen
In: Jedlitschka, Andreas and Ciolkowski, Marcus eds. The Future of Empirical Studies in Software Engineering. Workshop Series on Empirical Software Engineering (pp. 98-107)
ISBN : 3816764185 | Publisher : Fraunhofer IRB Verlag | Published : Stuttgart, Germany


XP culture: why the twelve practices both are and are not the most significant thing (2003)
Robinson, Hugh and Sharp, Helen
In: Proceedings of the Conference on Agile Development (p 12)
ISBN : 769520138 | Publisher : IEEE


Pedagogical Patterns: Advice For Educators (2012-07)
Bergin, Joseph; Eckstein, Jutta; Volter, Markus; Sipos, Marianna; Wallingford, Eugene; Marquardt, Klaus; Chandler, Jane; Sharp, Helen and Manns, Mary Lynn eds.
ISBN : 978-0-9851543-5-6 | Publisher : Joseph Bergin Software Tools


Co-Designing Resilient Socio-Technical Software Systems (2024)
Lopez, Tamara; Sharp, Helen and Wermelinger, Michel
In : 2024 International Workshop on Designing Software (Designing ’24) (14-15 Apr 2024, Lisbon, Portugal)


Sustaining Agility: Organizational Change, Factors and Theoretical Lenses (2023-05-20)
Barroca, Leonor; Sharp, Helen; Deshpande, Advait; Gregory, Peggy and Papadeas, Stavros
In : 24th International Conference on Agile Software Development, XP 2023 (13-16 Jun 2023, Amsterdam) (pp. 115-131)


Accounting for socio-technical resilience in software engineering (2023)
Lopez, Tamara; Sharp, Helen; Wermelinger, Michel; Langer, Melanie; Levine, Mark; Jay, Caroline; Yu, Yijun and Nuseibeh, Bashar
In : 2023 IEEE/ACM 16th International Conference on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering (CHASE) (14-15 May 2023, Melbourne)


Towards Understanding How Software Startups Deal with UX from Customer and User Information (2022-10-29)
Choma, Joelma; Machado, Leticia; de Souza, Cleidson R. B.; Sharp, Helen; Barroca, Leonor and Zaina, Luciana
In : 13th International Conference, ICSOB 2022 (08-11 Nov 2022, Bolzano, Italy) (pp. 287-303)


Responsible AI Systems: Who are the Stakeholders? (2022-07)
Deshpande, Advait and Sharp, Helen
In : AIES '22: 2022 AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society (19-21 May 2022) (pp. 227-236)


Roles of Middle Managers in Agile Project Governance (2022-06-09)
Uwadi, Maduka; Gregory, Peggy; Allison, Ian and Sharp, Helen
In : XP 2022 (13-17 Jun 2022, Copenhagen, Denmark)


Informed consent and participant recruitment in studies of software practice (2022-05)
Sharp, Helen; Lopez, Tamara and Wermelinger, Michel
In : 1st International Workshop on Recruiting Participants for Empirical Software Engineering (RoPES’22) (17 May 2022, Virtual)


Influences of developers' perspectives on their engagement with security in code (2022-05)
Rauf, Irum; Lopez, Tamara; Sharp, Helen; Petre, Marian; Tun, Thein; Levine, Mark; Towse, John; Linden, Dirk van der; Rashid, Awais and Nuseibeh, Bashar
In : 15th International Conference on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering (CHASE) (CHASE 2022) (18-19 May 2022, USA) (pp. 86-95)


Challenges of Recruiting Developers in Multidisciplinary Studies (2022)
Rauf, Irum; Lopez, Tamara; Sharp, Helen and Petre, Marian
In : 1st International Workshop on Recruiting Participants for Empirical Software Engineering (RoPES’22) (17 May 2022, Virtual)


Towards a Pattern Language for improving UX work in Software Startups (2022)
Choma, Joelma; Sharp, Helen; Barroca, Leonor; De Souza, Cleidson; Machado, Leticia and Zaina, Luciana
In : PLoP (Pattern Languages of Programs) Conference 2022 (17-24 Oct 2022, Online) ((In Press))


Concept Craft Cards: Deck of theoretical and practical suggestions for ACI developers (2021)
French, Fiona; Mancini, Clara and Sharp, Helen
In : 13th Conference on Creativity and Cognition, C and C 2021 (22-23 Jun 2021, Virtual Event)


More than Human Aesthetics: Interactive Enrichment for Elephants (2020-07-10)
French, Fiona; Mancini, Clara and Sharp, Helen
In : 2020 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS 2020) (6-10 Jul 2020, Eindhoven, Netherlands) (pp. 1661-1672)


Stakeholder Perceptions of IT Business Value in a Public Sector IT Digitalisation Project (2020-06)
Gregory, Peggy; Strode, Diane; Barroca, Leonor; Sharp, Helen and Taylor, Katie
In : European Conference on Information Systems (15-17 Jun 2020, Marrakech)


Onboarding: How Newcomers Integrate into an Agile Project Team (2020)
Gregory, Peggy; Strode, Diane E.; AlQuaisi, Raid; Sharp, Helen and Barroca, Leonor
In : Proceedings of XP 2020 (8-12 Jun 2020, Online) (pp. 20-36)


Strategy-Focused Agile Transformation: A Case Study (2020)
Sharp, Helen and Taylor, Katie
In : XP 20 International Conference on Agile Software Development (8-12 Jun 2020, Copenhagen, Denmark) (pp. 164-172)


An Anatomy of Security Conversations in Stack Overflow (2019-08-15)
Lopez, Tamara; Tun, Thein; Bandara, Arosha; Levine, Mark; Nuseibeh, Bashar and Sharp, Helen
In : 41st ACM/IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering (25 May - 1 Jun 2019, Montréal, Canada) (pp. 31-40)


Talking about Security with Professional Developers (2019-05-28)
Lopez, Tamara; Sharp, Helen; Tun, Thein; Bandara, Arosha; Levine, Mark and Nuseibeh, Bashar
In : 7th International Workshop Series on Conducting Empirical Studies in Industry (CESSER-IP) (28 May 2019, Montréal, Canada)


Hopefully We Are Mostly Secure: Views on Secure Code in Professional Practice (2019-05-27)
Lopez, Tamara; Sharp, Helen; Tun, Thein; Bandara, Arosha; Levine, Mark and Nuseibeh, Bashar
In : 12th International Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering (CHASE) (27 May 2019, Montréal, Canada) (pp. 61-68)


Enterprise agility: A Balancing Act - a local government case study (2019)
Barroca, Leonor; Sharp, Helen; Dingsøyr, Torgeir; Gregory, Peggy; Taylor, Katie and AlQaisi, Raid
In : XP 2019: 20th International Conference (21-25 May 2019, Montreal, QC, Canada) (pp. 207-223)


Enterprise Agility: Why Is Transformation so Hard? (2018-05-17)
Karvonen, Teemu; Sharp, Helen and Barroca, Leonor
In : XP 2018 19th International Conference on Agile Software Development (21-25 May 2018, Porto, Portugal) (pp. 131-145)


An Investigation of Security Conversations in Stack Overflow: Perceptions of Security and Community Involvement (2018)
Lopez, Tamara; Tun, Thein T.; Bandara, Arosha; Levine, Mark; Nuseibeh, Bashar and Sharp, Helen
In : First International Workshop on Security Awareness from Design to Deployment (SEAD'18) (27 May 2018, Gothenburg) (pp. 26-32)


Sustaining Agile Beyond Adoption (2018)
Barroca, Leonor; Gregory, Peggy; Kuusinen, Kati; Sharp, Helen and AlQaisi, Raid
In : 44th Euromicro Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications (29-31 Aug 2018, Prague, Czech Republic) (pp. 22-25)


Behavior-driven development benefits and challenges: reports from an industrial study (2018)
Pereira, Lauriane; Sharp, Helen; de Souza, Cleidson; Oliveira, Gabriel; Marczak, Sabrina and Bastos, Ricardo
In : XP '18 - 19th International Conference on Agile Software Development (21-25 May 2018, Porto, Portugal)


Knowledge Sharing in a Large Agile Organisation: a Survey Study (2017-05)
Kuusinen, K; Gregory, P; Sharp, Helen; Barroca, Leonor and Taylor, K
In : XP 2017: 18th International Conference on Agile Software Development (22-26 May 2017, Cologne)


Exploring Research through Design in Animal-Computer Interaction (2017)
French, Fiona; Mancini, Clara and Sharp, Helen
In : Proc. Fourth International Conference on Animal-Computer Interaction, ACI2017 (21-23 Nov 2017, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom)


Exploring methods for interaction design with animals: a case-study with Valli (2016-11-15)
French, Fiona; Mancini, Clara and Sharp, Helen
In : Proceedings for the Third International Conference on Animal-Computer Interaction, ACI2016 (15-17 Nov 2016, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom)


Strategies for doing Agile in a non-Agile Environment (2016-09)
Kuusinen, Kati; Gregory, Peggy; Sharp, Helen and Barroca, Leonor
In : ESEM 2016 (8-9 Sep 2016, Ciudad Spain)


Remote Working and Collaboration in Agile Teams (2016)
Deshpande, Advait; Sharp, Helen; Barroca, Leonor and Gregory, Peggy
In : International Conference on Information Systems (11-14 Dec 2016, Dublin, Ireland)


Playful UX for Elephants (2016)
French, Fiona; Mancini, Clara and Sharp, Helen
In : Proceedings of Measuring Behaviour 2016 (25-27 May 2016, Dublin) (pp. 445-448)


Designing Interactive Toys for Elephants (2015-10-05)
French, Fiona; Mancini, Clara and Sharp, Helen
In : Proceedings of the 2015 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play - CHI PLAY '15 (5-7 Oct 2015, London, United Kingdom) (pp. 523-528)


Agile challenges in practice: a thematic analysis (2015-05)
Gregory, Peggy; Barroca, Leonor; Taylor, Katie; Salah, Dina and Sharp, Helen
In : 16th International Conference on Agile Software Development, XP 2015 (25-29 May 2015, Helsinki)


Framing behaviours in novice interaction designers (2014-06)
Lotz, Nicole; Sharp, Helen; Woodroffe, Mark; Blyth, Richard; Rajah, Dino and Ranganai, Turugare
In : DRS 2014: Design's Big Debates. (16-19 Jun 2014, Umeå, Sweden) (pp. 1178-1190)


UX design in agile: a DSDM case study (2014-05)
Plonka, Laura; Sharp, Helen; Gregory, Peggy and Taylor, Katie
In : 15th International Conference on Agile Software Development (XP 2014) (26-30 May 2014, Rome, Italy)


Designing smart toys for the cognitive enrichment of elephants (2014)
French, Fiona; Mancini, Clara; Smith, Neil and Sharp, Helen
In : First Symposium on Intelligent Systems for Animal Welfare, Proceedings of the 50th Convention on Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour (1-4 Apr 2014, Goldsmiths, University of London)


A protocol study of novice interaction design behaviour in Botswana: solution-driven interaction design (2013-09)
Sharp, Helen; Lotz, Nicole; Blyth, Richard; Woodroffe, Mark; Rajah, Dino and Ranganai, Turugare
In : BCS HCI Conference 2013 (9-13 Sep 2013, London)


Co-evolving problems and solutions: The case of novice interaction designers in Botswana and the UK (2013-08)
Lotz, Nicole; Sharp, Helen; Woodroffe, Mark; Richard, Blyth; Rajah, Dino and Ranganai, Turugare
In : IASDR (26-30 Aug, Tokyo, Japan) (pp. 1004-1015)


INVocD: Identifier Name Vocabulary Dataset (2013)
Butler, Simon; Wermelinger, Michel; Yu, Yijun and Sharp, Helen
In : 10th Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories (18-19 May 2013, San Francisco)


A frame signature matrix for analysing and comparing interaction design behaviour (2012-09)
Blyth, Richard; Schadewitz, Nicole; Sharp, Helen; Woodroffe, Mark; Rajah, Dino and Turugare, Ranganai
In : BCS HCI Conference (12-14 Sep 2012, Birmingham)


Agile development and user experience design integration as an ongoing achievement in practice (2012-08)
Ferreira, Jennifer; Sharp, Helen and Robinson, Hugh
In : Agile 2012 (13-17 Aug 2012, Dallas, TX) (pp. 11-20)


Information flow within a dispersed agile team: a distributed cognition perspective (2012-05-22)
Sharp, Helen; Giuffrida, Rosalba and Melnik, Grigori
In : 13th International Conference on Agile Software Development: XP2012 (20-25 May 2012, Malmö Sweden) (pp. 62-76)


Disengagement in pair programming: does it matter? (2012)
Plonka, Laura; Sharp, Helen and van der Linden, Janet
In : ICSE 2012 (02-09 Jun 2012, Zurich) (pp. 496-506)


The mystery of the writing that isn’t on the wall: differences in public representations in traditional and agile software development (2012)
Petre, Marian; Sharp, Helen and Freudenberg, Sallyann
In : 5th International Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering (CHASE 2012) (2-9 Jun 2012, Zurich, Switzerland)


Software engineers’ perceptions of factors in motivation (2011-09-22)
Sach, Rien; Sharp, Helen and Petre, Marian
In : 5th International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement, ESEM 2011 (22-23 Sep 2011, Banff, Alberta, Canada)


What makes software engineers go that extra mile? (2011-09-07)
Sach, Rien; Sharp, Helen and Petre, Marian
In : 23rd Annual Psychology of Programming Interest Group 2011 (6-8 Sep 2011, York, UK)


Improving the tokenisation of identifier names (2011)
Butler, Simon; Wermelinger, Michel; Yu, Yijun and Sharp, Helen
In : 25th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (25-29 Jul 2011, Lancaster, UK) (pp. 130-154)


Collaboration in Pair Programming: driving and switching (2011)
Plonka, Laura; Segal, Judith; Sharp, Helen and van der Linden, Janet
In : XP 2011 : 12th International Conference on Agile Software Development (10-13 May 2011)


Mining Java Class Naming Conventions (2011)
Butler, Simon; Wermelinger, Michel; Yu, Yijun and Sharp, Helen
In : 27th IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance (25-30 Sep 2011, Williamsburg, VA, USA) (pp. 93-102)


Analysing requirements in a case study of pairing (2011)
Sharp, Helen and Yu, Yijun
In : Workdhop on Agile Requirements Engineering (Agile RE) at ECOOP 2011 25th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (26 Jul 2011, Lancaster, UK)


The use of MBTI in software engineering (2010-09-22)
Sach, Rien; Petre, Marian and Sharp, Helen
In : 22nd Annual Psychology of Programming Interest Group 2010 (19-22 Sep 2010, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid)


Continued Involvement in Software Development: Motivational Factors (2010-09-17)
Sach, Rien; Sharp, Helen and Petre, Marian
In : The 2010 ACM-IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (16-17 Sep 2010, Bolzano, Italy) (pp. 331-334)


Exploring the Influence of Identifier Names on Code Quality: An empirical study (2010-03)
Butler, Simon; Wermelinger, Michel; Yu, Yijun and Sharp, Helen
In : 14th European Conference on Software Maintenance and Reengineering (15-18 Mar 2010, Madrid, Spain) (pp. 156-165)


Relating identifier naming flaws and code quality: An empirical study (2009)
Butler, Simon; Wermelinger, Michel; Yu, Yijun and Sharp, Helen
In : 16th Working Conference on Reverse Engineering (13-16 Oct 2009, Lille, France)


An Empirical Study of the Evolution of an Agile-Developed Software System (2007-05-20)
Capiluppi, A.; Fernandez-Ramil, J.; Higman, J.; Sharp, H.C. and Smith, N.
In : 29th International Conference on Software Engineering (20-26 May 2007, Minneapolis, USA)


The snap method (2007)
Olsen, Anneli; Rogers, Yvonne and Sharp, Helen
In : Beyond Current User Research: Designing Methods for New Users, Technologies, and Design Processes (27 Apr 2007, San Jose, California, USA)


The Role of Story Cards and the Wall in XP teams: a distributed cognition perspective (2006-07-23)
Sharp, Helen; Robinson, Hugh; Segal, Judith and Furniss, Dominic
In : Agile Conference 2006 (23-28 Jul 2006, Minneapolis, USA) (pp. 65-75)


Organisational culture and XP: three case studies (2005-07-29)
Robinson, Hugh and Sharp, Helen
In : Proceedings of the Agile Conference 2005 (24-29 Jul 2005, Denver, Colorado, USA)


Some social factors of software engineering: the maverick, community and technical practices (2005)
Sharp, Helen and Robinson, Hugh
In : 27th International Conference on Software Engineering: 2005 Workshop on Human and Social Factors of Software Engineering (HSSE) (15-21 May 2005, St Louis, Missouri, USA)


The conundrum of categorising requirements: managing requirements for learning on the move (2004-09-06)
Taylor, J.; Sharp, H.C.; Haley, D.T. and Nuseibeh, B.
In : 21st IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE) (6-10 Sep 2004, Kyoto, Japan) (pp. 309-314)


Learner-Centred Design and Evaluation of Web-Based E-Learning Environments (2004-04-01)
Minocha, Shailey and Sharp, Helen
In : The 7th HCI Educators Workshop: Effective Teaching and Training in HCI (1-2 Apr 2004, University of Central Lancashire, Preston)


Establishing user requirements for a mobile learning environment (2003)
Sharp, Helen; Taylor, Josie; Löber, Andreas; Frohberg, Dirk; Mwanza, Daisy and Murelli, Elena
In : Conference proceedings of Eurescom 2003 (29 Sep - 1 Oct 2003, Heidelberg, Germany)


Exploring Motivational Differences between Software Developers and Project Managers (2007-09-27)
Sharp, Helen; Hall, Tracy; Baddoo, Nathan and Beecham, Sarah
Department of Computing, The Open University


Adopting Agile in a large organization: balancing the old with the new (2007-09-07)
Abdelnour-Nocera, Jose and Sharp, Helen
Department of Computing, The Open University


The Motivation of Software Engineers: Developing a Rigorous and Usable Model (2007-04-19)
Hall, Tracy; Baddoo, Nathan; Beecham, Sarah; Robinson, Hugh and Sharp, Helen
Department of Computing, The Open University


Protocol for a Systematic Literature Review of Motivation in Software Engineering (2006-10-05)
Beecham, Sarah; Baddoo, Nathan; Hall, Tracy; Robinson, Hugh and Sharp, Helen
Department of Computing, The Open University


Managing Requirements for Mobile Learning (2004-05-26)
Haley, Debra T.; Nuseibeh, Bashar; Sharp, Helen C. and Taylor, Josie T.
Department of Computing, The Open University


Customer collaboration: successes and challenges in practice. Report of an activity session held at XP 2003 (2004-03-17)
Sharp, Helen; Robinson, Hugh and Segal, Judith
Department of Computing, The Open University


Acquiring Object Technology Concepts: The role of previous software development experience (1998)
Sharp, Helen C. and Griffyth, Jacqui
Department of Computing, The Open University


Factors affecting the adoption of software (1998)
Sharp, Helen C.; Hovenden, Fiona M. and Woodman, Mark
Department of Computing, The Open University


Intelligent Support for Conceptual Design: A flow modeling approach (1997)
Rzevski, George; Sharp, Helen; Petre, Marian and Buckland, Rodney
Department of Computing, The Open University