Kari Rönkkö

When Plans do not Work Out: How Plans are Used in Software Development Projects

Based on empirical material from the area of software engineering, this article discusses the issue of plans and planning as an integral part of and prerequisite for software development work. It relates observed practices to literature produced by the Computer Supported Cooperative Work community. Empirical studies of software development practice seldom address re-planning. By analyzing the empirical material from one project we are able to show how certain kinds of co-ordination problems arise and how they may be dealt with. The empirical research does not focus primarily on the character of plans; instead, it raises the question ‘what means are necessary and should be provided in order to cope with situations when plans do not work out? In relation to plans, especial emphasis is on “due process”, i.e. how the project plan and the company wide project model are maintained to enable the identification and articulation of deviations from it. On the basis of our empirical analysis we propose to support the articulation and coordination work necessary in situations where plans do not adequately work out.

Law, norms, piracy and online anonymity: Practices of de‐identification in the global file sharing community

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to understand more of online anonymity in the global file sharing community in the context of social norms and copyright law. The study describes the respondents in terms of use of VPN or similar service related to age, gender, geographical location, as well as analysing the correlation with file sharing frequencies.Design/methodology/approach – This study is to a large extent descriptively collecting data through a web‐based survey. This was carried out in collaboration with the BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay (TPB), allowing the authors to link the survey from the main logo of their site. In 72 hours the authors received over 75,000 responses, which gives the opportunity to compare use of anonymity services with factors of age, geographical region, file sharing frequency, etc.Findings – Overall, 17.8 per cent of the respondents use a VPN or similar service (free or paid). A core of high frequency uploaders is more inclined to use VPN or similar services than the ...

Qualitative research in software engineering

Qualitative research methods were developed in the social sciences to enable researchers to study social and cultural phenomena and are designed to help researchers understand people and the social and cultural contexts within which they live (Denzin and Lincoln 2011). The goal of understanding a phenomenon from the point of view of the participants and its particular social and institutional context is largely lost when textual data are quantified. Taylor and Bogdan (1984) point out that qualitative research methods were designed mostly by educational researchers and other social scientists to study the complexities of human behavior (e.g., motivation, communication, difficulties in understanding). According to these authors, human behavior is clearly a phenomenon that, due to its complexity, requires qualitative methods to be fully understood, since much of human behavior cannot be adequately described and explained through statistics and other quantitative methods. Examples of qualitative methods are action research, case study research, ethnography, and grounded theory. Qualitative data sources include observation and participant observation (fieldwork), interviews and questionnaires, documents and texts, and the researcher’s impressions and reactions. Many in the software industry recognize that software development also presents a number of unique management and organizational issues that need to be addressed and solved in order for the field to progress. And this situation has led to studies related not only Empir Software Eng (2011) 16:425–429 DOI 10.1007/s10664-011-9163-y

Reporting usability metrics experiences

It is often claimed that software development is negatively affected by infrequent, incomplete and inconsistent measurements; improving with the help of metrics is an obvious solution. Software testing provides opportunities for measurement that give organizations insight in to processes. Usability testing is part of the testing area, although it is not a commonly addressed area within software engineering, perhaps because of a split between qualitative and quantitative paradigms. We compare a usability testing framework called UTUM with principles for Software Process Improvement, and find areas of close agreement as well as areas where our work illuminates new characteristics. UTUM is found to be a useful vehicle for improvement in software engineering, dealing as it does with both product and process. Our work emphasises the importance of the neglected area of usability testing. Our experience also illustrates how the metrics have been tailored to act as a boundary object between different disciplines.

Developing Quality through Measuring Usability--The UTUM Test Package

This paper presents a tool for building quality of use into the software and software process, in the form of a test package for mass market devices. It is developed for measuring user experience, which is seen as a more encompassing term than usability. The test package, which is under constant development, is the result of a long term cooperation between industry and academia, and is in use in industrial development projects. It shows usability through the use of metrics, for efficiency, effectiveness and satisfaction, supported by qualitative judgements made by a test leader/usability expert. It gives a clear demonstration of quality, from the customer and end-user point of view. The case presented here, where the test has been performed concurrently in two countries, has been a quality assurance of the test package, which has been found to work efficiently and flexibly in a complex industrial environment, with complicated relationships between customers, partners and end-users.

Meeting organisational needs and quality assurance through balancing agile and formal usability testing results

This paper deals with a case study of testing with a usability testing package (UTUM), which is also a tool for quality assurance, developed in cooperation between industry and research. It shows that within the studied company, there is a need to balance agility and formalism when producing and presenting results of usability testing to groups who we have called Designers and Product Owners. We have found that these groups have different needs, which can be placed on opposite sides of a scale, based on the agile manifesto. This becomes a Designer and a Product Owner Manifesto. The test package is seen as a successful hybrid method combining agility with formalism, satisfying organisational needs, and fulfilling the desire to create a closer relation between industry and research.

SPI success factors within product usability evaluation

This article presents an experience report where we compare 8 years of experience of product related usability testing and evaluation with principles for software process improvement (SPI). In theory the product and the process views are often seen to be complementary, but studies of industry have demonstrated the opposite. Therefore, more empirical studies are needed to understand and improve the present situation. We find areas of close agreement as well as areas where our work illuminates new characteristics. It has been identified that successful SPI is dependent upon being successfully combined with a business orientation. Usability and business orientation also have strong connections although this has not been extensively addressed in SPI publications. Reasons for this could be that usability focuses on product metrics whilst todays SPI mainly focuses on process metrics. Also because todays SPI is dominated by striving towards a standardized, controllable, and predictable software engineering process; whilst successful usability efforts in organisations are more about creating a creative organisational culture advocating a useful product throughout the development and product life cycle. We provide a study and discussion that supports future development when combining usability and product focus with SPI, in particular if these efforts are related to usability process improvement efforts.

A Framework for Software Usability and User Experience Measurement in Mobile Industry

The mobile industry faces challenges in designing software usability and user experience (UX) measurement instruments. The major difficulties arise due to: 1) diversity of definitions and terminology used for usability and UX aspects and attributes, which lead to inconsistencies, and 2) lack of a taxonomy for these attributes with links to well-defined measures in the literature. In this paper, we present a framework to support mobile industry to overcome these challenges. We first unified the terminology and definitions for usability and UX attributes in the literature. Then, we created taxonomy of attributes and sub-attributes. By using the well-known Goal Question Metric (GQM) approach, we identified a comprehensive set of questions and measures for each attribute that could be used as a basis for developing measurement instruments. The framework was evaluated through a case study conducted in a usability research, development and consultancy company for mobile industry in Sweden.

Understanding industrial user experience: an excerpt from 1 st International Workshop on Industrial User Experience (WIndUX 2011)

This paper describes background, problem statement, discussion and results of the 1st International Workshop on Industrial User Experience organized in conjunction with IndiaHCI 2011 conference Bangalore, India,. The workshop focused on discussing what user experience is in the context of hardware and software products in the heavy industry and how it could be measured. The main finding of this workshop is the understanding that in the larger context of the industry, user experience cannot focus only on individual users as in consumer domains. Several organizational aspects come into play in industrial user experience, which requires novel development approaches that could be built on human factors, industrial design, software user experience as well as the traditional engineering traditions.