137 research outputs found
An Analysis of issues against the adoption of Dynamic Carpooling
Using a private car is a transportation system very common in industrialized
countries. However, it causes different problems such as overuse of oil,
traffic jams causing earth pollution, health problems and an inefficient use of
personal time. One possible solution to these problems is carpooling, i.e.
sharing a trip on a private car of a driver with one or more passengers.
Carpooling would reduce the number of cars on streets hence providing worldwide
environmental, economical and social benefits. The matching of drivers and
passengers can be facilitated by information and communication technologies.
Typically, a driver inserts on a web-site the availability of empty seats on
his/her car for a planned trip and potential passengers can search for trips
and contact the drivers. This process is slow and can be appropriate for long
trips planned days in advance. We call this static carpooling and we note it is
not used frequently by people even if there are already many web-sites offering
this service and in fact the only real open challenge is widespread adoption.
Dynamic carpooling, on the other hand, takes advantage of the recent and
increasing adoption of Internet-connected geo-aware mobile devices for enabling
impromptu trip opportunities. Passengers request trips directly on the street
and can find a suitable ride in just few minutes. Currently there are no
dynamic carpooling systems widely used. Every attempt to create and organize
such systems failed. This paper reviews the state of the art of dynamic
carpooling. It identifies the most important issues against the adoption of
dynamic carpooling systems and the proposed solutions for such issues. It
proposes a first input on solving the problem of mass-adopting dynamic
carpooling systems.Comment: 10 pages, whitepaper, extracted from B.Sc. thesis "Dycapo: On the
creation of an open-source Server and a Protocol for Dynamic Carpooling"
(Daniel Graziotin, 2010
The Dynamics of Creativity in Software Development
Software is primarily developed for people by people and human factors must
be studied in all software engineering phases. Creativity is the source to
improvise solutions to problems for dominating complex systems such as software
development. However, there is a lack of knowledge in what creativity is in
software development and what its dynamics are. This study describes the
current state of the research plan towards a theory on creativity in software
development. More specifically, it (1) states the motivation for studying
creativity in software development under a multidisciplinary view; it (2)
provides a first review of the literature identifying the shortcomings in the
field; it (3) proposes a research design, which includes rarely employed
methods in software engineering. To understand creativity in software
development will provide a better knowledge of the software construction
process and how individuals intellectually contribute to the creation of
better, innovative products.Comment: 6 Pages. To be presented in the 14th International Conference on
Product-Focused Software Process Improvement (PROFES 2013) - Doctoral
Symposium, 12 June 2013, Paphos, Cyprus. This is the final, accepted version
(after peer review
Happiness and the productivity of software engineers
Software companies and startups often follow the idea of flourishing
happiness among developers. Perks, playground rooms, free breakfast, remote
office options, sports facilities near the companies, company retreats, you
name it. The rationale is that happy developers should be more productive and
also retained.
But is it the case that happy software engineers are more productive?
Moreover, are perks the way to go to make developers happy? Are developers
happy at all? What are the consequences of unhappiness among software
engineers?
These questions are important to ask both from the perspective of
productivity and from the perspective of sustainable software development and
well-being in the workplace. Managers, team leaders, as well as team members
should be interested in these concerns.
This chapter provides an overview of our studies on the happiness of software
developers. You will learn why it is important to make software developers
happy, how happy they really are, what makes them unhappy, and what is expected
regarding happiness and productivity while developing software.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figures. To appear in Rethinking Productivity in Software
Engineering, edited by Caitlin Sadowski and Thomas Zimmermann. arXiv admin
note: text overlap with arXiv:1707.0043
How Do You Feel, Developer? An Explanatory Theory of the Impact of Affects on Programming Performance
Affects---emotions and moods---have an impact on cognitive activities and the
working performance of individuals. Development tasks are undertaken through
cognitive processes, yet software engineering research lacks theory on affects
and their impact on software development activities. In this paper, we report
on an interpretive study aimed at broadening our understanding of the
psychology of programming in terms of the experience of affects while
programming, and the impact of affects on programming performance. We conducted
a qualitative interpretive study based on: face-to-face open-ended interviews,
in-field observations, and e-mail exchanges. This enabled us to construct a
novel explanatory theory of the impact of affects on development performance.
The theory is explicated using an established taxonomy framework. The proposed
theory builds upon the concepts of events, affects, attractors, focus, goals,
and performance. Theoretical and practical implications are given.Comment: 24 pages, 2 figures. Postprin
The Affect of Software Developers: Common Misconceptions and Measurements
The study of affects (i.e., emotions, moods) in the workplace has received a
lot of attention in the last 15 years. Despite the fact that software
development has been shown to be intellectual, creative, and driven by
cognitive activities, and that affects have a deep influence on cognitive
activities, software engineering research lacks an understanding of the affects
of software developers. This note provides (1) common misconceptions of affects
when dealing with job satisfaction, motivation, commitment, well-being, and
happiness; (2) validated measurement instruments for affect measurement; and
(3) our recommendations when measuring the affects of software developers.Comment: 2 pages. Research note to be presented at the 2015 IEEE/ACM 8th
International Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software
Engineering (CHASE 2015
Happy software developers solve problems better: psychological measurements in empirical software engineering
For more than 30 years, it has been claimed that a way to improve software
developers' productivity and software quality is to focus on people and to
provide incentives to make developers satisfied and happy. This claim has
rarely been verified in software engineering research, which faces an
additional challenge in comparison to more traditional engineering fields:
software development is an intellectual activity and is dominated by
often-neglected human aspects. Among the skills required for software
development, developers must possess high analytical problem-solving skills and
creativity for the software construction process. According to psychology
research, affects-emotions and moods-deeply influence the cognitive processing
abilities and performance of workers, including creativity and analytical
problem solving. Nonetheless, little research has investigated the correlation
between the affective states, creativity, and analytical problem-solving
performance of programmers. This article echoes the call to employ
psychological measurements in software engineering research. We report a study
with 42 participants to investigate the relationship between the affective
states, creativity, and analytical problem-solving skills of software
developers. The results offer support for the claim that happy developers are
indeed better problem solvers in terms of their analytical abilities. The
following contributions are made by this study: (1) providing a better
understanding of the impact of affective states on the creativity and
analytical problem-solving capacities of developers, (2) introducing and
validating psychological measurements, theories, and concepts of affective
states, creativity, and analytical-problem-solving skills in empirical software
engineering, and (3) raising the need for studying the human factors of
software engineering by employing a multidisciplinary viewpoint.Comment: 33 pages, 11 figures, published at Peer
Consequences of Unhappiness While Developing Software
The growing literature on affect among software developers mostly reports on
the linkage between happiness, software quality, and developer productivity.
Understanding the positive side of happiness -- positive emotions and moods --
is an attractive and important endeavor. Scholars in industrial and
organizational psychology have suggested that also studying the negative side
-- unhappiness -- could lead to cost-effective ways of enhancing working
conditions, job performance, and to limiting the occurrence of psychological
disorders. Our comprehension of the consequences of (un)happiness among
developers is still too shallow, and is mainly expressed in terms of
development productivity and software quality. In this paper, we attempt to
uncover the experienced consequences of unhappiness among software developers.
Using qualitative data analysis of the responses given by 181 questionnaire
participants, we identified 49 consequences of unhappiness while doing software
development. We found detrimental consequences on developers' mental
well-being, the software development process, and the produced artifacts. Our
classification scheme, available as open data, will spawn new happiness
research opportunities of cause-effect type, and it can act as a guideline for
practitioners for identifying damaging effects of unhappiness and for fostering
happiness on the job.Comment: 6 pages. To be presented at the Second International Workshop on
Emotion Awareness in Software Engineering, colocated with the 39th
International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE'17). Extended version
of arXiv:1701.02952v2 [cs.SE
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