Software engineering has long promised to improve software development productivity. However, nearly four decades after the birth of software engineering, software projects still fail to meet deadlines at an alarming rate. One reason the promised increase in productivity has not been achieved is the lack of attention to the sociological and psychological aspects of software engineering (called socio-technical software engineering). In order to fully understand software development, we must

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... der the complete picture. This includes the software engineering process, tools, business rules, organizational structure, management methods, politics, work environments, and the socio-technical aspects. This paper first establishes the importance of socio-technical software engineering. Then it presents an extensive review of previous sociotechnical research. Finally, it presents directions for future research on socio-technical software engineering.