350,096 research outputs found
How software engineering research aligns with design science: A review
Background: Assessing and communicating software engineering research can be
challenging. Design science is recognized as an appropriate research paradigm
for applied research but is seldom referred to in software engineering.
Applying the design science lens to software engineering research may improve
the assessment and communication of research contributions. Aim: The aim of
this study is 1) to understand whether the design science lens helps summarize
and assess software engineering research contributions, and 2) to characterize
different types of design science contributions in the software engineering
literature. Method: In previous research, we developed a visual abstract
template, summarizing the core constructs of the design science paradigm. In
this study, we use this template in a review of a set of 38 top software
engineering publications to extract and analyze their design science
contributions. Results: We identified five clusters of papers, classifying them
according to their alignment with the design science paradigm. Conclusions: The
design science lens helps emphasize the theoretical contribution of research
output---in terms of technological rules---and reflect on the practical
relevance, novelty, and rigor of the rules proposed by the research.Comment: 32 pages, 10 figure
Towards a Theory of Software Development Expertise
Software development includes diverse tasks such as implementing new
features, analyzing requirements, and fixing bugs. Being an expert in those
tasks requires a certain set of skills, knowledge, and experience. Several
studies investigated individual aspects of software development expertise, but
what is missing is a comprehensive theory. We present a first conceptual theory
of software development expertise that is grounded in data from a mixed-methods
survey with 335 software developers and in literature on expertise and expert
performance. Our theory currently focuses on programming, but already provides
valuable insights for researchers, developers, and employers. The theory
describes important properties of software development expertise and which
factors foster or hinder its formation, including how developers' performance
may decline over time. Moreover, our quantitative results show that developers'
expertise self-assessments are context-dependent and that experience is not
necessarily related to expertise.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures, 26th ACM Joint European Software Engineering
Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE
2018), ACM, 201
Software Measurement Activities in Small and Medium Enterprises: an Empirical Assessment
An empirical study for evaluating the proper implementation of measurement/metric programs in software companies in one area of Turkey is presented. The research questions are discussed and validated with the help of senior software
managers (more than 15 yearsâ experience) and then used for interviewing a variety of medium and small scale software companies in Ankara. Observations show that there is a
common reluctance/lack of interest in utilizing measurements/metrics despite the fact that they are well known in the industry. A side product of this research is that internationally recognized standards such as ISO and CMMI are pursued if they are a part of project/job
requirements; without these requirements, introducing those standards to the companies remains as a long-term target to increase quality
Naming the Pain in Requirements Engineering: A Design for a Global Family of Surveys and First Results from Germany
For many years, we have observed industry struggling in defining a high
quality requirements engineering (RE) and researchers trying to understand
industrial expectations and problems. Although we are investigating the
discipline with a plethora of empirical studies, they still do not allow for
empirical generalisations. To lay an empirical and externally valid foundation
about the state of the practice in RE, we aim at a series of open and
reproducible surveys that allow us to steer future research in a problem-driven
manner. We designed a globally distributed family of surveys in joint
collaborations with different researchers and completed the first run in
Germany. The instrument is based on a theory in the form of a set of hypotheses
inferred from our experiences and available studies. We test each hypothesis in
our theory and identify further candidates to extend the theory by correlation
and Grounded Theory analysis. In this article, we report on the design of the
family of surveys, its underlying theory, and the full results obtained from
Germany with participants from 58 companies. The results reveal, for example, a
tendency to improve RE via internally defined qualitative methods rather than
relying on normative approaches like CMMI. We also discovered various RE
problems that are statistically significant in practice. For instance, we could
corroborate communication flaws or moving targets as problems in practice. Our
results are not yet fully representative but already give first insights into
current practices and problems in RE, and they allow us to draw lessons learnt
for future replications. Our results obtained from this first run in Germany
make us confident that the survey design and instrument are well-suited to be
replicated and, thereby, to create a generalisable empirical basis of RE in
practice
Design: One, but in different forms
This overview paper defends an augmented cognitively oriented generic-design
hypothesis: there are both significant similarities between the design
activities implemented in different situations and crucial differences between
these and other cognitive activities; yet, characteristics of a design
situation (related to the design process, the designers, and the artefact)
introduce specificities in the corresponding cognitive activities and
structures that are used, and in the resulting designs. We thus augment the
classical generic-design hypothesis with that of different forms of designing.
We review the data available in the cognitive design research literature and
propose a series of candidates underlying such forms of design, outlining a
number of directions requiring further elaboration
Persuading developers to buy into software process improvement: a local opinion and empirical evidence
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