Rachel K. E. Bellamy

BlogCentral: the role of internal blogs at work

This paper describes a preliminary investigation into an internal corporate blogging community called BlogCentral. We conducted semi-structured interviews with fourteen active bloggers to investigate the role of blogging and its effects on work processes. Our findings suggest that BlogCentral facilitates access to tacit knowledge and resources vetted by experts, and, most importantly, contributes to the emergence of collaboration across a broad range of communities within the enterprise.

Moving into a new software project landscape

When developers join a software development project, they find themselves in a project landscape, and they must become familiar with the various landscape features. To better understand the nature of project landscapes and the integration process, with a view to improving the experience of both newcomers and the people responsible for orienting them, we performed a grounded theory study with 18 newcomers across 18 projects. We identified the main features that characterize a project landscape, together with key orientation aids and obstacles, and we theorize that there are three primary factors that impact the integration experience of newcomers: early experimentation, internalizing structures and cultures, and progress validation.

Learning conversations

Is this surprising? Consider rich academic communities arguments in the halls, small group seminars; coffee houses are often a place for intellectual discussion, etc. This is the model of learning that we need to take seriously in developing our technologies. Imagine if students could have technologies that let them ask for clarification of ideas quickly and let them participate actively in the construction of their own understanding with constant feedback. If we can scale conversations then we will have really scaled critical learning opportunities.

Smalltalk scaffolding: a case study of minimalist instruction

A curriculum was developed to introduce users to the Smalltalk object-oriented programming language. Applying the Minimalist model of instruction [3], we developed a set of example-based learning scenarios aimed at supporting real work, getting started fast, reasoning and improvising, coordinating system and text, supporting error recognition and recovery, and exploiting prior knowledge. We describe our initial curriculum design as well as the significant changes that have taken place as we have observed it in use.

In search of design principles for tools and practices to support communication within a learning community

The Newspaper provides a web-based presentation of news in a classic newspaper format. Community members contribute stories by simply sending email to an address dedicated to the newspaper. Software running on a server automatically stores, formats and re-displays the senders mail as an HTML news article. The newspaper can thus be viewed from any web browser. In addition, the frontpage of the Newspaper is projected on a wall in a communal lounge area which can be viewed conveniently by all community members who pass through the area during the course of their workday, as well as during tea time, a daily scheduled time when people gather in the lounge area.

A view matcher for learning Smalltalk

The View Matcher is a structured browser for Smalltalk/V. It presents a set of integrated and dynamic views of a running application, intended to coordinate and rationalize a programmers early understanding of Smalltalk and its environment. We describe the system through two user scenarios involving exploration of the model-view-controller paradigm.

An Information Foraging Theory Perspective on Tools for Debugging, Refactoring, and Reuse Tasks

Theories of human behavior are an important but largely untapped resource for software engineering research. They facilitate understanding of human developers’ needs and activities, and thus can serve as a valuable resource to researchers designing software engineering tools. Furthermore, theories abstract beyond specific methods and tools to fundamental principles that can be applied to new situations. Toward filling this gap, we investigate the applicability and utility of Information Foraging Theory (IFT) for understanding information-intensive software engineering tasks, drawing upon literature in three areas: debugging, refactoring, and reuse. In particular, we focus on software engineering tools that aim to support information-intensive activities, that is, activities in which developers spend time seeking information. Regarding applicability, we consider whether and how the mathematical equations within IFT can be used to explain why certain existing tools have proven empirically successful at helping software engineers. Regarding utility, we applied an IFT perspective to identify recurring design patterns in these successful tools, and consider what opportunities for future research are revealed by our IFT perspective.

Modeling programmer navigation: A head-to-head empirical evaluation of predictive models

Software developers frequently need to perform code maintenance tasks, but doing so requires time-consuming navigation through code. A variety of tools are aimed at easing this navigation by using models to identify places in the code that a developer might want to visit, and then providing shortcuts so that the developer can quickly navigate to those locations. To date, however, only a few of these models have been compared head-to-head to assess their predictive accuracy. In particular, we do not know which models are most accurate overall, which are accurate only in certain circumstances, and whether combining models could enhance accuracy. Therefore, we have conducted an empirical study to evaluate the accuracy of a broad range of models for predicting many different kinds of code navigations in sample maintenance tasks. Overall, we found that models tended to perform best if they took into account how recently a developer has viewed pieces of the code, and if models took into account the spatial proximity of methods within the code. We also found that the accuracy of single-factor models can be improved by combining factors, using a spreading-activation based approach, to produce multi-factor models. Based on these results, we offer concrete guidance about how these models could be used to provide enhanced software development tools that ease the difficulty of navigating through code.

Flexible modeling tools for pre-requirements analysis: conceptual architecture and research challenges

A serious tool gap exists at the start of the software lifecy-cle, before requirements formulation. Pre-requirements analysts gather information, organize it to gain insight, en-vision possible futures, and present insights and recom-mendations to stakeholders. They typically use office tools, which give great freedom, but no help with consistency management, change propagation, or information migration to downstream tools. Despite these downsides, office tools are still favored over modeling tools, which are constrain-ing and difficult to use. We introduce the notion of flexible modeling tools, which blend the advantages of office and modeling tools. We propose a conceptual architecture for such tools, and outline research challenges to be met in realizing them. We briefly describe the Business Insight Toolkit, a prototype tool embodying this architecture.

Deploying CogTool: integrating quantitative usability assessment into real-world software development

Usability concerns are often difficult to integrate into real-world software development processes. To remedy this situation, IBM research and development, partnering with Carnegie Mellon University, has begun to employ a repeatable and quantifiable usability analysis method, embodied in CogTool, in its development practice. CogTool analyzes tasks performed on an interactive system from a storyboard and a demonstration of tasks on that storyboard, and predicts the time a skilled user will take to perform those tasks. We discuss how IBM designers and UX professionals used CogTool in their existing practice for contract compliance, communication within a product team and between a product team and its customer, assigning appropriate personnel to fix customer complaints, and quantitatively assessing design ideas before a line of code is written. We then reflect on the lessons learned by both the development organizations and the researchers attempting this technology transfer from academic research to integration into real-world practice, and we point to future research to even better serve the needs of practice.