Maira Marques

Requirements Engineering Practices in Very Small Software Enterprises: A Diagnostic Study

Requirements engineering practices have been identified as a key issue that affects the success rate of projects in most software organizations. The software engineering community has studied the requirements engineering practices of medium and large-sized organizations extensively, and has produced interesting and suitable solutions. However, several software engineering researchers have shown that most current requirements engineering practices are unsuitable for small and very small software companies. They have also highlighted that there is a lack of knowledge about the requirements engineering practices in these types of companies. This article presents the results of a diagnostic study the authors are performing in very small software companies in Chile. The study tries to identify the state of the practice in this niche and also the potential limitations to adopt appropriate requirements engineering practices in Chilean very small software enterprises.

A systematic mapping study on practical approaches to teaching software engineering

Background: Software engineering is a core subject in computing education. Today, there seems to be a consensus that teaching software engineering requires students to perform practical experiences that simulate the work in the software industry. This represents a challenge for universities and instructors, because these experiences are complex to setup and involve considerable time and effort. Although there are several experiences and proposals reported in the literature, there is no clear solution to address this challenge. Aim: Being knowledgeable about the several approaches reported in the literature for dealing with this challenge is the first step to proposing a new solution. Counting on this knowledge allows instructors to reuse lessons learned from other universities. In order to address this challenge, we conducted a systematic mapping study that intends to answer the following questions: What are the main approaches used to address the practical experiences in software engineering education? Is there an emerging tendency to address this challenge? Which software process models are used to support the practical experiences in software engineering courses? Have the universities changed the way of conducting these experiences over the years? What are the main forums to seek information on practical approaches for teaching software engineering? Method: We used a systematic mapping study to identify and classify available research papers that report the use of practical experiences in software engineering education. Results: There were 173 papers selected, analyzed and classified. The results indicate that universities have realized the value of including practical experiences as part of the software engineering teaching process. However, few proposals indicate how to address that challenge. The practical approaches identified in this study were game learning, case studies, simulation, inverted classrooms, maintenance projects, service learning, and open source development. Only one recent report on the use of traditional approaches (i.e., teaching using expositive lectures) was found. The use of a development process to support these practical experiences seems not to be a concern for software engineering instructors. Only 40% of these studies report the use of a development process to guide the process experience. The reported processes are mainly agile methods. Conferences are the most used forum to publish studies in this area (72%). One third of these studies have been published over the last five years. Conclusion: There is a clear concern for teaching software engineering involving practical experiences, and there are several initiatives exploring how to do it. The map gives us an overview of the different proposals to address this challenge, and also allows us to make some preliminary conclusions about the preferred approaches.

Improving teamwork in students software projects

The software industry and the academia have recognized the importance of teamwork as a driver to succeed in software projects. Therefore, the industry expects that new engineers are able to work in teams. Unfortunately, teamwork is a skill that cannot be transferred in a simple way, and there is not a clear recipe for doing that. This paper proposes the use of particular ThinkLets (a process pattern to address collaboration recurrent problems) to help overcome particular problems that jeopardize teamwork. This proposal has been evaluated through software developments in the academia involving computer science undergraduate students.

Enhancing the Student Learning Experience in Software Engineering Project Courses

Carrying out real-world software projects in their academic studies helps students to understand what they will face in industry, and to experience first-hand the challenges involved when working collaboratively. Most of the instructional strategies used to help students take advantage of these activities focus on supporting agile programming, which is appropriate for capstone courses. This is not always recommended in initial software engineering project courses, however, where novice developers run projects in teams while simultaneously taking other courses. To enhance the learning and teamwork experience in this latter instructional scenario, this paper proposes a formative monitoring method, reflexive weekly monitoring (RWM), for use in project courses that involve disciplined software processes and loosely coupled work. RWM uses self-reflection and collaborative learning practices to help students be aware of their individual and team performance. RWM was applied in a case study over nine consecutive semesters. The results obtained indicate that RWM was effective in enhancing the learning experience in the instructional scenario studied. While students in the monitored teams were more effective and coordinated, and experienced a higher sense of team belonging and satisfaction, little evidence was found of them being more productive than students working in non-monitored teams.

User Interfaces for Self-reporting Emotions: A Systematic Literature Review

Affective computing has focused on emotion acquisition using techniques of objective (sensors, facial recognition, physiological signals) and subjective measurement (self-report). Each technique has advantages and drawbacks, and a combination of the information generated from each could provide systems more balanced and accurate information about user emotions. However, there are several benefits to self-reporting emotions, over objective techniques: the collected information may be more precise and it is less intrusive to determine. This systematic literature review focuses on analyzing which technologies have been proposed to conduct subjective measurements of emotions through self-report. We aim to understand the state of the art regarding the features of interfaces for emotional self-report, identify the context for which they were designed, and describe several other aspects of the technologies. A SLR was conducted, resulting in 18 selected papers, 13 of which satisfied the inclusion criteria. We identified most existing systems use graphical user interfaces, and there are very few proposals that use tangible user interfaces to self-report emotional information, which may be an opportunity to design novel interfaces, especially for populations with low digital skills, e.g. older adults.

A systematic literature review about technologies for self-reporting emotional information

Emotional information is complex to manage by humans and computers alike, so it is difficult for users to express emotional information through technology. Two main approaches are used to gather this type of information: objective (e.g. through sensors or facial recognition) and subjective (reports by users themselves). Subjective methods are less intrusive and may be more accurate, although users may fail to report their emotions or not be entirely truthful about them. The goal of this study is to identify trends in the area of interfaces for the self-report of human emotions, under-served populations of users, and avenues of future research. A systematic literature review was conducted on six search engines, resulting in a set of 863 papers, which were filtered in a systematic way until we established a corpus of 40 papers. We studied the technologies used for emotional self-report as well as the issues regarding these technologies, such as privacy, interaction mechanisms, and how they are evaluated.

What Differentiates Chilean Niche Software Companies: Business Knowledge and Reputation

Chilean small software companies suffer a high mortality rate. Focus groups with 20 entrepreneurs and project managers from such companies shed light on what makes niche software companies more likely to survive. The extensive knowledge allowed by specializing in a niche increases the odds of success. Consequently, a companys improved reputation lets it better negotiate contracts and improve its financial situation.

Software Engineering Education in Chile - Status Report

Although most computer science graduates develop their professional careers as software engineers, there are no academic program with a specific focus on software engineering in Chile. Considering ACM/IEEE Software Engineering 2014 Curriculum Guidelines as a starting point, we analyzed the curricula of the CS Engineering and CS Technology programs offered by the most traditional Chilean universities, in order to establish to what extent they address the knowledge areas included in that recommendation. We also gathered information about theoretical and/or practical approaches of their courses, their types of evaluations and temporality. The results of this status report indicate that most knowledge areas of the ACM/IEEE curricula are covered but not all with the same emphasis. Programs count on three or four mandatory software engineering courses, most of them have a practical approach, are evaluated through exams and projects and start between the seventh and eight semesters. These results let us learn that some knowledge areas are not emphasized as they deserve. For example, Software Quality or Software Process are skills that industry often requires but academia does not seem to take into account. Similarly, it might be necessary to have students learn about software engineering earlier during their career. Knowing the actual status, actions can be taken.

Software engineering education — Does gender matter in project results? — A Chilean case study

Teaching software engineering in a practical course in academia is considered one of the best strategies to help students understand what they will face in industry. Teamwork, coordination, communication are soft skills that are demanded in real life, but how to improve these courses to be more effective and yield better results is not clear. Software engineering - as with most computer careers - is known to be short on women, but the participation of women improves diversity to student teams. Women may have personal characteristics that are different from the ones we normally see among male software engineering students. Do, mixed gender software teams have better project results than one-gender teams? After assisting software engineering courses for four years, I observed mixed gender teams to be better. With this idea in mind I performed a case study where I analyzed the behavior and the results of software projects over nine semesters. The obtained results show that mixed gender teams were more effective and coordinated.

Coordination and pressing: A formula for teamwork — A case study

The software industry has recognized the importance of teamwork as a driver for good projects results. However teamwork is not an easy goal to reach, because there is a large list of variables affecting the process. Each project probably will require a particular recipe to promote and perform real teamwork. Therefore a one-size fits-all approach does not work to promote teamwork in the software development scenarios. This article presents an influence model that helps the development teams to find a strategy that allow them to carry out teamwork. This model is the result of an analysis conducted by the authors on 27 software projects performed in a controlled setting in an academic environment.