Abstract:

Human capital measurement (HCM) is a topic widely discussed in recent research. The switch to a more service and knowledge intensive society states the importance of companies and projects to have an applicable way of estimating key assets like IT, research and development, logistics or in our case -Human Capital. Budgeting in software projects is used and discussed in several disciplines, specifically, in its applicability in agile project management. While using several budgeting approaches in software projects students ought to question the necessity or applicability of HCM.

Challenging this problem, this research tries to question the history of human capital measurement models and their development. This initial research tries to provide a first overview of the development of HCM since the 1960s and how the models have developed over time as well as how the models have influenced research over time. By conducting the literature review, EBSCO and Google scholar have been queried to search and cluster research. By usage of several synonyms and word combinations like e.g. human capital measurement / assessment / valuation, the first HCM litrature map was drafted. However, it should be noted that only some of the results obtained were included in the present systematic literature review, since the non-academic contributions, which concentrate rather on the calculation process without a historical perspective, had to be disregarded.

Students that are keen on understanding concepts in a comprehensive way stated in projects that the literature mapping has certain advantages in comprehension by having a visual map on how the models explained and discussed were developed.

Taken together the first findings of this initial literature review and literature mapping, it indicates that a literature mapping of HCM is useful for students to question several techniques for budgeting software projects. This first literature map consists of resp. 80 sources, which are linked and show initial research paths over time. The aim of this submission is to receive input on additional sources, models and ways to increease comparability with other scholars.

Keywords:

Human Capital Measurement, Literature Review Concept, Literature Mapping.