Influence of developer factors on code quality: a data study

© 2019 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes,creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.Automatic source-code inspection tools help to assess, monitor and improve code quality. Since these tools only examine the software project’s codebase, they overlook other possible factors that may impact code quality and the assessment of the technical debt (TD). Our initial hypothesis is that human factors associated with the software developers, like coding expertise, communication skills, and experience in the project have some measurable impact on the code quality. In this exploratory study, we test this hypothesis on two large open source repositories, using TD as a code quality metric and the data that may be inferred from the version control systems. The preliminary results of our statistical analysis suggest that the level of participation of the developers and their experience in the project have a positive correlation with the amount of TD that they introduce. On the contrary, communication skills have barely any impact on TD.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

A Conceptual Model of Client-driven Agile Requirements Prioritization: Results of a Case Study

ABSTRACT Requirements (re)prioritization is an essential mechanism of agile development approaches to maximize the value for the clients and to accommodate changing requirements. Yet, in the agile Requirements Engineering (RE) literature, very little is known about how agile (re)prioritization happens in practice. Conceptual models about this process are missing, which, in turn, makes it difficult for both practitioners and researchers to reason about requirements decision-making at inter-iteration time. We did a multiple case study on agile requirements prioritization methods to yield a conceptual model for understanding the inter-iteration prioritization process. The model is derived by using interview data from practitioners in 8 development organizations. Such a model makes explicit the concepts that are used tacitly in the agile requirements prioritization practice and can be used for structuring future empirical investigations about this topic, and for analyzing, supporting, and improving the process in real-life projects

Complementing Measurements and Real Options Concepts to Support Inter-iteration Decision-Making in Agile Projects

Agile software projects are characterized by iterative and incremental development, accommodation of changes and active customer participation. The process is driven by creating business value for the client, assuming that the client (i) is aware of it, and (ii) is capable to estimate the business value, associated with the separate features of the system to be implemented. This paper is focused on the complementary use of measurement techniques and concepts of real-option-analysis to assist clients in assessing and comparing alternative sets of requirements. Our overall objective is to provide systematic support to clients for the decision-making process on what to implement in each iteration. The design of our approach is justified by using empirical data, published earlier by other authors

Software cost estimation

The paper gives an overview of the state of the art of software cost estimation (SCE). The main questions to be answered in the paper are: (1) What are the reasons for overruns of budgets and planned durations? (2) What are the prerequisites for estimating? (3) How can software development effort be estimated? (4) What can software project management expect from SCE models, how accurate are estimations which are made using these kind of models, and what are the pros and cons of cost estimation models

On top management support for software cost estimation

Inaccurate software cost estimates continue causing project overruns and hurting firms’ economy. This thesis addresses the problem by focusing on top management role in applying estimation methodologies successfully in organisations. The research questions are 1) How does top management support software cost estimation, and 2) What are the impacts of top management support for creating a good cost estimate for a software project? Three empirical studies, one quantitative and two qualitative, were conducted to address the research questions. The studies identified practices, through which top management is involved in cost estimation, and collected evidence on the impact of practices on estimation success. The quantitative study is based on views of 114 Finnish software professionals, and the quantitative studies are based on in-depth findings from three Finnish software producing companies and projects. The results show that top management support for estimation is mostly indirect. Management focuses on creating a successful environment for estimation instead of hands-on participation.The key factors of top management support include adequate resources, demonstrating the importance of estimation and seeking realism. This indirect role is enough for successful estimation.On the other hand, the results provide evidence that top management may negatively impact estimation. For example, unclear expectations may cause the project team to aim for the wrong outcome, expressed expectations may bias estimation and interpreting estimates as commitments may decrease estimators’ motivation and cause them to give high estimates. The practical implication is that top management should avoid direct participation in software estimation and focus on sustaining a supportive and unbiased environment. By doing this, many projects should be able to avoid failures hurting firms’ competitiveness. From the research perspective, the results provide evidence that people-related perspectives are an important factor in software estimation, implying that a shifting focus from methodologies toward managerial topics is justified.Epätarkat ohjelmistoprojektien kustannusarviot johtavat suunnitelmien ylittymiseen ja rasittavat yritysten taloutta. Tämä väitöskirja keskittyy ylimmän johdon rooliin arviointimenetelmien menestyksekkäässä soveltamisessa organisaatioissa. Väitöskirjan tutkimuskysymykset ovat 1) kuinka ylin johto tukee ohjelmistojen kustannusarviointia ja 2) mitä vaikutuksia johdon tuella hyvän kustannusarvion laatimiseksi on ohjelmistoprojektille? Väitöskirjan tulokset perustuvat yhteen määrälliseen ja kahteen laadulliseen tutkimukseen. Tutkimukset tunnistivat tapoja, joilla johto osallistui kustannusarviointiin sekä keräsi näyttöä osallistumiskäytänteiden vaikutuksista arvioinnin onnistumiseen. Määrällinen tutkimus pohjautuu 114 suomalaisen ohjelmistoammattilaisen näkemyksiin, kun taas laadulliset tutkimukset pohjautuvat löydöksiin kolmen suomalaisen ohjelmistoyrityksen toteuttamista kolmesta ohjelmistoprojektista. Tulokset osoittavat, että ylimmän johdon tuki arvioinnille on pääasiallisesti epäsuoraa. Johto keskittyy hyvien edellytysten luomiseen sen sijaan, että osallistuisi arviointiin henkilökohtaisesti. Tärkeimpiin tapoihin tukea arviointia kuuluvat mm. riittävien resurssien varmistaminen ja realististen arvioiden tavoittelu. Yllä kuvattu epäsuora osallistuminen on riittävää arvioinnin onnistumiseksi. Toisaalta johdon toimet voivat myös vaikuttaa arviointiin negatiivisesti. Esimerkiksi epäselvät tavoitteet saattavat johtaa väärien asioiden tavoitteluun, johdon esittämät odotukset voivat vääristää arvioinnin tuloksia ja arvioiden tulkitseminen lupauksiksi voi laskea arvioitsijoiden motivaatiota ja johtaa perusteettoman korkeiden arvioiden antamiseen. Esitettyjen tulosten perusteella johdon pitäisi välttää suoraa osallistumista arviointiin ja keskittyä arviointia tukevan ilmapiirin luomiseen. Näillä toimilla useat projektit voisivat todennäköisesti välttää yrityksille vahingolliset epäonnistumiset. Tutkimusnäkökulmasta tulokset osoittavat, että inhimilliset tekijät ovat merkittävässä roolissa kustannusarvioinnissa, ja lisäpanostukset johtamisnäkökulmien tutkimiseen ovat perusteltuja

Measures related to social and human factors that influence productivity in software development teams

Software companies need to measure their productivity. Measures are useful indicators to evaluate processes, projects, products, and people who are part of software development teams. The results of these measurements are used to make decisions, manage projects, and improve software development and project management processes. This research is based on selecting a set of measures related to social and human factors (SHF) that influence productivity in software development teams and therefore in project management. This research was performed in three steps. In the first step, there was performed a tertiary literature review aimed to identify measures related to productivity. Then, the identified measures were submitted for its evaluation to project management experts and finally, the measures selected by the experts were mapped to the SHF. A set of 13 measures was identified and defined as a key input for designing improvement strategies. The measures have been compared to SHF to evaluate the development team\u27s performance from a more human context and to establish indicators in productivity improvement strategies of software projects. Although the number of productivity measures related to SHF is limited, it was possible to identify the measures used in both traditional and agile contexts

Employer Involvement in Office of Disability Employment (ODEP) Demonstration Programs

[Excerpt] As part of the independent evaluation of ODEP’s demonstration program being conducted by Westat, the Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) asked Westat to provide in-depth analysis of three issues that were identified at site visits and in Quarterly Reports during Phase II of the evaluation. This report provides in-depth analysis on the first issue—employer involvement in adult demonstration programs