Fabio Calefato

Tool support for geographically dispersed inspection teams

Software inspection is one of software engineerings best practices for detecting and removing defects early in the development process. However, the prevalence of manual activities and face-to-face meetings within software inspections hinder their applicability in the context of global software development, where software engineering activities are spread across multiple sites and even multiple countries. In this article, we describe a web-based tool, called the Internet-Based Inspection System (IBIS), that aims to support geographically dispersed inspection teams. On the basis of findings from empirical studies of software inspections, the IBIS tool adopts a reengineered inspection process to minimize synchronous activities and coordination problems. We present the underlying process model, how the tool is used within the inspection stages, and experiences using the IBIS tool as the enabling infrastructure for distributed software inspections. Copyright

The challenges of sentiment detection in the social programmer ecosystem

A recent research trend has emerged to study the role of affect in in the social programmer ecosystem, by applying sentiment analysis to the content available in sites such as GitHub and Stack Overflow. In this paper, we aim at assessing the suitability of a state-of-the-art sentiment analysis tool, already applied in social computing, for detecting affective expressions in Stack Overflow. We also aim at verifying the construct validity of choosing sentiment polarity and strength as an appropriate way to operationalize affective states in empirical studies on Stack Overflow. Finally, we underline the need to overcome the limitations induced by domain-dependent use of lexicon that may produce unreliable results.

Computer-mediated communication to support distributed requirements elicitations and negotiations tasks

Requirements engineering is one of the most communication-intensive activities in software development, greatly affected by project stakeholder geographical distribution. Despite advances in collaboration technologies, global software teams continue to experience significant challenges in the elicitation and negotiation of requirements. Deciding which communication technologies to deploy to achieve effective communication in distributed requirements engineering activities is not a trivial task. Is face-to-face or text-based communication more appropriate for requirements elicitations and negotiations? In teams that do not have access to face-to-face communication, is text-based communication more useful in requirements elicitations than in requirements negotiations? Here, we report an empirical study that analyzes the effectiveness of synchronous computer-mediated communication in requirements elicitations and negotiations. Our investigation is guided by a theoretical framework that we developed from theories of computer-mediated communication, common ground, and media selection for group tasks; a framework that considers the effectiveness of a communication medium in relation to the information richness needs of requirements elicitation and negotiation tasks. Our findings bring forward empirical evidence about the perceived as well as objective fit between synchronous communication technology and requirements tasks. First, face-to-face is not always the most preferred medium for requirements tasks, and we reveal a number of conditions in which, in contrast to common belief, text-based communication is preferred for requirements communication. Second, we find that in evaluating outcomes of requirements elicitations and negotiations objectively, group performance is not affected by the communication medium. Third, when groups interact only via text-based communication, common ground in requirements negotiations takes longer to achieve than in requirements elicitations, indicating that distributed requirements elicitation is the task where computer-mediated communication tools have most opportunity for successful application.

Mining successful answers in stack overflow

Recent research has shown that drivers of success in online question answering encompass presentation quality as well as temporal and social aspects. Yet, we argue that also the emotional style of a technical contribution influences its perceived quality. In this paper, we investigate how Stack Overflow users can increase the chance of getting their answer accepted. We focus on actionable factors that can be acted upon by users when writing an answer and making comments. We found evidence that factors related to information presentation, time and affect all have an impact on the success of answers.

An Empirical Investigation on Text-Based Communication in Distributed Requirements Workshops

Among the software development activities, requirements engineering is one of the most communication-intensive and then, its effectiveness is greatly constrained by the geographical distance between stakeholders. For this reason, the need to identify the appropriate task/technology fits to support teams of geographically dispersed stakeholders plays a key role for coping with the lack of physical proximity when developing requirements. In this paper we report on an empirical study that assessed the use of synchronous text-based communication in distributed requirements workshops, as compared to face-to-face (F2F), and the effects of computer-mediated communication (CMC), with respects to the different tasks of distributed requirements elicitation and negotiation. First results show that, in terms of satisfaction with performance, CMC elicitation is a better task/technology fit than CMC negotiation. Furthermore, the general preference for F2F over CMC is due to the strong preference for the F2F negotiation fit over the CMC counterpart.

The role of social media in affective trust building in customer---supplier relationships

Trust represents a key issue in building successful customer–supplier relationships. In this sense, social software represents a powerful means for fostering trust by establishing a direct, more personal communication channel with customers. Therefore, companies are now investing in social media for building their social digital brand and strengthening relationships with their customers. In this paper, we presented two experiments by means of which we investigated the role of traditional websites and social media in trust building along the cognitive and affective dimensions. We hypothesize that traditional websites (content-oriented) and social media (interaction-oriented) may have a different effect on trust building in customer–supplier relationships, based on the first impression provided to potential customers. Although additional research is still needed, our findings add to the existing body of evidence that both cognitive and affective trust can be successfully fostered through online presence. Specifically, social media provide companies with tools to communicate benevolence to potential customer and, therefore, foster the affective commitment of customers. Traditional websites, instead, are more appropriate for communicating the competence and reliability of a company, by fostering trust building along the cognitive dimension. The results of our studies provide implications for researchers and practitioners, by highlighting the importance of combining the two media for effectively building a trustworthy online company image.

Incorporating social software into distributed agile development environments

The use of social software applications, such as wikis and blogs, has emerged as a practical and economical option to consider as global teams may use them to organize, track, publish their work, and then, share knowledge. We intend to push further the application of social software principles and technologies into collaborative development environments for agile and distributed projects. As a first step, in this paper we first present a survey of social software, as well as tools and environments for collaborative development. Then, we present some opportunities and challenges of incorporating social software aspects in agile distributed development.

A Controlled Experiment on the Effects of Machine Translation in Multilingual Requirements Meetings

Requirements engineering is a communication-intensive activity and thus it suffers much from language difficulties in global software projects. Remote requirements meetings can benefit from machine translation as this technology is today available in the form of cross-language chat services. In this paper, we present the design of a controlled experiment to investigate the effects of automatic machine translation services in requirements meetings. Experiment participants, using either Italian or Portuguese as native language, are asked to interact with a communication tool from a distance in order to prioritize and estimate requirements. First results show that real-time machine translation is not disruptive of the conversation flow and is accepted with favor by participants. However, concrete effects are expected to emerge when language barriers are critical.

Embedding social networking information into jazz to foster group awareness within distributed teams

A Collaborative Development Environments (CDE) provides a project workspace with a standardized toolset to help distributed development teams cope with geographical distance. However, there is a lack of support to reduce socio-cultural distance, which poses practical barriers to the development of connections and shared context/culture between team members. The rise of the Social Web has created several opportunities to publish personal information, often further composed through Web mashups, which can be regarded as a valuable data source in order to establish a shared context among remote developers, with little or no chances to meet. In this paper we present our preliminary work that aims to provide distributed software teams with overall, contextual awareness aggregated in one place. Using the IBM Jazz as CDE, which already provides both presence and workspace awareness, we leveraged the FriendFeed aggregator service to embed personal information about distributed co-workers, collected from social networks. Disseminating additional group awareness information to developers, who have little or no chances to meet, can help to speed up the establishment of organizational values, attitudes, and trust-based inter-personal connections.

Can Real-Time Machine Translation Overcome Language Barriers in Distributed Requirements Engineering?

In global software projects work takes place over long distances, meaning that communication will often involve distant cultures with different languages and communication styles that, in turn, exacerbate communication problems. However, being aware of cultural distance is not sufficient to overcome many of the barriers that language differences bring in the way of global project success. In this paper, we investigate the adoption of machine translation (MT) services in synchronous text-based chat in order to overcome any language barrier existing among groups of stakeholders who are remotely negotiating software requirements. We report our findings from a simulated study that compares the efficiency and the effectiveness of two MT services, Google Translate and apertium-service, in translating the messages exchanged during four distributed requirements engineering workshops. The results show that (a) Google Translate produces significantly more adequate translations than Apertium from English to Italian; (b) both services can be used in text-based chat without disrupting real-time interaction.