The future of software development methods

Most of the software development methods in use today are founded on concepts that emerged in the early decades of the software industry – the systems development life cycle, object orientation, agile and lean methods, open source, software product lines, software patterns – the list goes on. However there are several disruptive elements present in the current software landscape – software ecosystems, servitization, the Internet of Things, parallel processing, cognitive computing, quantum computing – that pose significant challenges in terms of the software development methods that might be appropriate. We suggest that these disruptive elements highlight the need to create new software development methods more appropriate to the needs of the current development environment

Gender Differences in Personality Traits of Software Engineers

There is a growing body of gender studies in software engineering to understand diversity and inclusion issues, as diversity is recognized to be a key issue to healthy teams and communities. A second factor often linked to team performance is personality, which has received far more attention. Very few studies, however, have focused on the intersection of these two fields. Hence, we set out to study gender differences in personality traits of software engineers. Through a survey study we collected personality data, using the HEXACO model, of 483 software engineers. The data were analyzed using a Bayesian independent sample t-test and network analysis. The results suggest that women score significantly higher in Openness to Experience, Honesty-Humility, and Emotionality than men. Further, men show higher psychopathic traits than women. Based on these findings, we develop a number of propositions that can guide future research

Not so Shore Anymore: The New Imperatives When Sourcing in the Age of Open

Software outsourcing has been the subject of much research in the past 25 years, largely because of potential cost savings envisaged through lower labour costs, ‘follow-the-sun’ development, access to skilled developers, and proximity to new markets. In recent years, the success of the open source phe-nomenon has inspired a number of new forms of sourcing that combine the potential of global sourcing with the elusive and much sought-after possibility of increased innovation. Three of these new forms of sourcing are opensourcing, innersourcing and crowdsourcing. Based on a comparative analysis of a number of case studies of these forms of sourcing, we illustrate how they differ in both significant and subtle ways from outsourcing. We conclude that these emerging sourcing approaches call for conceptual development and refocusing. Specifically, to understand software sourcing in the age of open, the important concept is no longer ‘shoring,’ but rather five identified imperatives (governance sharedness, unknownness, intrinsicness, innovativeness and co-opetitiveness) and their implications for the development situation at hand

Successful Reuse of Software Components: A Report from the Open Source Perspective

A promising way of software reuse is Component-Based Software Development (CBSD). There is an increasing number of OSS products available that can be freely used in product development. How- ever, OSS communities themselves have not yet taken full advantage of the “reuse mechanism”. Many OSS projects duplicate effort and code, even when sharing the same application domain and topic. One suc- cessful counter-example is the FFMpeg multimedia project, since several of its components are widely and consistently reused into other OSS projects. This paper documents the history of the libavcodec library of components from the FFMpeg project, which at present is reused in more than 140 OSS projects. Most of the recipients use it as a black- box component, although a number of OSS projects keep a copy of it in their repositories, and modify it as such. In both cases, we argue that libavcodec is a successful example of reusable OSS library of compo- nents

Company soldiers and gone-natives: role conflict and career ambition among firm-employed open source developers

Software companies are increasingly shifting their role in open source software (OSS) projects from passive adopters to active contributors, and creators of OSS projects. Many firms now employ developers to work on OSS projects to influence their further development. These developers may gain considerable influence in OSS communities, though this typically takes a long time. Previous research found that those individual developers’ agendas are not always aligned to that of the firm. While so-called “company soldiers” strongly identify with their firm, other developers may have “gone native”: they identify more strongly with the OSS community rather than the firm. We study the effect of such an imbalance of identification on firm-community role conflict, which may lead to an intention to quit either the firm or the OSS community. We also consider the moderating effects of developers’ career ambitions on this relationship. Furthermore, we include the effects of developers’ desired career paths on their intentions to quit the firm and community. We test our model using a sample of 177 firm-employed OSS developers, and find that identification imbalance is associated with firm-community role conflict and that these conflicts drive both intentions to quit the firm and the community. Other findings include a significant negative moderating effect of developers’ firm career aspirations on the relation between role conflict and intentions to quit the firm. Several of our hypotheses were not supported, but we found “regions of significance,” which suggests several avenues for further research. We conclude with recommendations for managing firm-community relationships

Research protocol for a case study of crowdsourcing software development

Crowdsourcing is an emerging topic within software engineering research. This report presents the protocol for our case study of crowdsourcing at a multi-national company. The findings of the case study are presented in a paper in the proceedings of the 36th International Conference on Software Engineering (2014) (see ref. [37]). This protocol presents additional details that provide more insight regarding the background, design and execution of our study. The research design can also be used for replicating the case study so as to be able to more easily compare different case studies

Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater: Comments on "Recent Developments in PLS"

Evermann and Rönkkö aim to present an overview of recent advances in PLS, and while some advances are described with several useful recommendations, we argue that their article does not fully deliver on its promise. In this response, we argue that their position presents an unbalanced view, ignores several methodological advances by IS scholars. We note that several recommendations are so stringent that implementing that there are philosophical and practical differences that are insufficiently taken into account. Further, several studies that highlight the shortcomings of PLS seem to be based on specially designed cases that are not necessarily representative of typical use of PLS. In our response, we call for a more balanced debate that takes into consideration different perspectives and that studies of the performance of PLS are conducted fairly. While we do not disagree with E&R’s recommendations, the implementation of those is challenged by a lack of tool support, and we observe that besides scholars using PLS, editors and reviewers also have a responsibility to be cognizant of methodological advances. We commend E&R for their efforts in studying the limitations of PLS which have spurred several methodological advances, but also caution that we should not ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater,” by discarding PLS for its known limitations

Company soldiers and gone-natives: role conflict and career ambition among firm-employed open source developers [Appendix]

Appendi

Knowns and Unknowns: An Experience Report on Discovering Tacit Knowledge of Maritime Surveyors

Context: Requirements elicitation is an essential activity to ensure that systems provide the necessary functionality to users, and that they are fit for purpose. In addition to traditional `reductionist' techniques, the use of observations and ethnography-style techniques have been proposed to identify requirements. Research Problem: One frequently heard issue with observational techniques is that they are costly to use, as developers would lose considerable time to partake, and also depend on luck in identifying requirements. Very few experience reports exist to evaluate observational techniques in practice. Results: In this experience report, we draw on several data sources, covering insights from both developers and users. The data were collected through 9 interviews with users and developers, and over 80 hours of observation of prospective users in the maritime domain. We capture `knowns' and `unknowns' from both developers and users, and highlight the importance of observational studies. Contribution: While observational techniques are costly to use, we conclude that essential information is uncovered, which is key for developers to understand system users and their concerns.Comment: Accepted to the International Working Conference on Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality. Springer, Cham, 2023. Barcelona, 17.-20. Apri