Prof Helen Sharp Email: h.c.sharp@open.ac.uk Telephone: +44 (0)1908 653638 Fax: +44 (0)1908 652140

I am Professor of Software Engineering in the Computing Department of The Open University, where I lead the Empirical Studies of Software Development research group.

My main research interest focuses on the human and social aspects of software engineering, leveraging my expertise in both Interaction Design and Software Engineering. In particular, I am interested in the practice of software engineering and therefore have established and maintain a wide range of industrial collaborations. Since 2000, I have been actively involved in the development and organisation of several academic and industrial conferences in software engineering, HCI and agile development, including SPA, Agile; XP; OOPSLA; and HCI. I am Associate Editor in Chief for IEEE Software with responsibility for human and social aspects.

The Agile Alliance’s Academic Research Programme has been discontinued, but reports of the exciting research that it supported are still available on the website.

I have been an investigator for externally-funded grants from EPSRC and ESRC: Models of motivation in software engineering (EPSRC; £52K; Jan to Dec 2006); Mechanisms of Innovation in Design (ESRC Cognitive Engineering Programme; £80K; April 1996 to December 1998); Facilitating communication across domains of engineering (EPSRC; £220K; Feb 1995 to April 1997).

I am joint author for one of the leading HCI text books and am co-founder of the International Pedagogical Patterns project, which celebrated 10 years of activity in 2006.

Some of my recent publications are listed below.

• Hall, T., Beecham, S., Baddoo, N., Sharp, H. and Robinson, H. (2009) ‘A Systematic Review of Theory Use in Studies Investigating the Motivations of Software Engineers’ ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, 18(3)
• Sharp, H., Robinson, H.M. and Petre, M. (2009) ‘The Role of Physical Artefacts in Agile Software Development: two complementary perspectives’, Interacting with Computers, 21(1-2) 108-116
• Hall, T., Sharp, H., Beecham, S., Baddoo, N., and Robinson, H. (2008) ‘What do we know about motivation?’, IEEE Software July/August 2008 92-94
• Sharp, H. and Robinson, H. (2008) ‘Collaboration and Co-ordination in mature eXtreme Programming teams’ International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 66, 506-518.

• with Yvonne Rogers and Jenny Preece (2007) Interaction Design: beyond human-computer interaction (2^nd edition), John Wiley (with associated website)

• Capiluppi, A., Ramil, J.F., Higman, J., Sharp, H. and Smith, N. (2007) ‘An empirical study of evolution patterns for an agile system, that combines qualitative and quantitative approaches’ in Proceedings of ICSE 2007, ACM, pp 511-518.
• Robinson, H., Segal, J. and Sharp, H. (2007) ‘Ethnographically-informed Empirical Studies of Software Practice’ Information and Software Technology, 49(6) 540-551

• Petre, M., Johnson, J. and Sharp, H. (2006) ‘Simple elements given complexity through combination: a combinatorial account of knitwear design.’ Design Studies, 27(2), 183-222
• Sharp, H., Hovenden, F. and Woodman, M. (2005) ‘Using metaphor to analyse qualitative data: Vulcans and Humans in software development, Empirical Software Engineering 10(3) 343 - 365.
• Sharp, H. and Robinson, H. (2004) 'An ethnographic study of XP practices', Empirical Software Engineering 9(4), 353-375.
• Sharp, H., Woodman, M. and Hovenden, F. (2004) 'Tensions in the adoption and evolution of software quality management systems: a discourse analytic approach' International Journal of Human Computer Studies, 61(2), 219-236.
• Armitage, U., Wilson, S., and Sharp, H.C. (2004) 'Can Creating Navigation Aids Benefit Learning with Electronic Texts?', Journal of ITSE (Interactive Technology and Smart Education), 1(2).
• Sharp, H., Manns, M.L. and Eckstein, J. (2003) 'Evolving Pedagogical Patterns: the work of the pedagogical patterns project', Computer Science Education, 13(4), 315-330.