Sherlock A. Licorish

Understanding the attitudes, knowledge sharing behaviors and task performance of core developers: A longitudinal study

Abstract Context Prior research has established that a few individuals generally dominate project communication and source code changes during software development. Moreover, this pattern has been found to exist irrespective of task assignments at project initiation. Objective While this phenomenon has been noted, prior research has not sought to understand these dominant individuals. Previous work considering the effect of team structures on team performance has found that core communicators are the gatekeepers of their teams’ knowledge, and the performance of these members was correlated with their teams’ success. Building on this work, we have employed a longitudinal approach to study the way core developers’ attitudes, knowledge sharing behaviors and task performance change over the course of their project, based on the analysis of repository data. Method We first used social network analysis (SNA) and standard statistical analysis techniques to identify and select artifacts from ten different software development teams. These procedures were also used to select central practitioners among these teams. We then applied psycholinguistic analysis and directed content analysis (CA) techniques to interpret the content of these practitioners’ messages. Finally, we inspected these core developers’ activities as recorded in system change logs at various points in time during systems’ development. Results Among our findings, we observe that core developers’ attitudes and knowledge sharing behaviors were linked to their involvement in actual software development and the demands of their wider project teams. However, core developers appeared to naturally possess high levels of insightful characteristics, which became evident very early during teamwork. Conclusions Project performance would likely benefit from strategies aimed at surrounding core developers with other competent communicators. Core developers should also be supported by a wider team who are willing to ask questions and challenge their ideas. Finally, the availability of adequate communication channels would help with maintaining positive team climate, and this is likely to mitigate the negative effects of distance during distributed developments.

Analyzing confidentiality and privacy concerns: insights from Android issue logs

Context: Post-release user feedback plays an integral role in improving software quality and informing new features. Given its growing importance, feedback concerning security enhancements is particularly noteworthy. In considering the rapid uptake of Android we have examined the scale and severity of Android security threats as reported by its stakeholders. Objective: We systematically mine Android issue logs to derive insights into stakeholder perceptions and experiences in relation to certain Android security issues. Method: We employed contextual analysis techniques to study issues raised regarding confidentiality and privacy in the last three major Android releases, considering covariance of stakeholder comments, and the level of consistency in user preferences and priorities. Results: Confidentiality and privacy concerns varied in severity, and were most prevalent over Jelly Bean releases. Issues raised in regard to confidentiality related mostly to access, user credentials and permission management, while privacy concerns were mainly expressed about phone locking. Community users also expressed divergent preferences for new security features, ranging from more relaxed to very strict. Conclusions: Strategies that support continuous corrective measures for both old and new Android releases would likely maintain stakeholder confidence. An approach that provides users with basic default security settings, but with the power to configure additional security features if desired, would provide the best balance for Androids wide cohort of stakeholders.

Interactive Posters: An Alternative to Collect Practitioners' Experience

Context: The validity of survey-based research depends on, amongst other considerations, the number and validity of obtained data points. As with any empirical study that involves practitioners, collecting data via surveys is difficult. Objectives: We report our experiences derived while conducting an industry survey on the impact of agile practices on software process quality. Method: After unsuccessfully trying to collect data with an online questionnaire, we used an interactive approach with posters at practitioners-focussed software engineering community events to aid data collection. Results: We present a list of lessons learnt. In particular, the poster-based data collection approach provided utility, for both gathering a large amount of responses and facilitating follow-up interactions with study participants. Conclusion: Our experiences in this work may help those facing challenges associated with obtaining responses from practitioners through the use of potentially complex questionnaires.

Exploring software developers work practices

We studied IBM Jazz practitioners interactions and task performance.This work mined logs from 30,646 work items (WIs) created since 3 years by 474 practitioners.Software practitioners studied were mostly involved in fixing defects.The nature of the work being performed influenced practitioners engagement.Combination of behavioral, intrinsic, and extrinsic factors affect task performance. In seeking to understand the processes enacted during software development, an increasing number of studies have mined software repositories. In particular, studies have endeavored to show how teams resolve software defects. Although much of this work has been useful, we contend that large-scale examinations across the range of activities that are commonly performed, beyond defect-related issues alone, would help us to more fully understand the reasons why defects occur as well as their consequences. More generally, these explorations would reveal how team processes occur during all software development efforts. We thus extend such studies by investigating how software practitioners work while undertaking the range of software tasks that are typically performed. Multiple forms of analyses of a longitudinal case study reveal that software practitioners were mostly involved in fixing defects, and that their engagement covaried depending on the nature of the work they were performing. Furthermore, multiple external factors affected speed of task resolution. Our outcomes suggest that behavioral and intrinsic issues may interact with extrinsic factors becoming significant predictors of the speed of software task resolution.

Exploring the Prevalence and Evolution of Android Concerns: A Community Viewpoint

In line with growing awareness of the need for systems to adapt quickly to change, there has been increasing interest in the evolution of software systems. Research has particularly considered developer-led activities change over time. Comparatively less consideration has been given to the study of software evolution as driven by the wider community of stakeholders. Although, a project’s wider community is central to the feedback system and project success. We have contributed to such efforts and studied the evolution of architecture issues and non-functional requirements in the Android project, as identified by the wider Android community1. We mined the Android issues tracker, employing n-gram analysis in our examination of 21,547 issues. We observe that most architecture-related issues were located in Android application layer, and these issues increased with time. Additionally, usability-related concerns were reported most when they were held to be given greatest attention. Outcomes suggests that Android’s open model and shared ownership have positively impacted Google’s success, which could provide a useful lesson for other similar projects.

QuickReview: A Novel Data-Driven Mobile User Interface for Reporting Problematic App Features

User-reviews of mobile applications provide information that benefits other users and developers. Even though reviews contain feedback about an apps performance and problematic features, users and app developers need to spend considerable effort reading and analyzing the feedback provided. In this work, we introduce and evaluate QuickReview, an intelligent user interface for reporting problematic app features. Preliminary user evaluations show that QuickReview facilitates users to add reviews swiftly with ease, and also helps developers with quick interpretation of submitted reviews by presenting a ranked list of commonly reported features.

Technical debt and agile software development practices and processes: An industry practitioner survey

Abstract Context: Contemporary software development is typically conducted in dynamic, resource-scarce environments that are prone to the accumulation of technical debt. While this general phenomenon is acknowledged, what remains unknown is how technical debt specifically manifests in and affects software processes, and how the software development techniques employed accommodate or mitigate the presence of this debt. Objectives: We sought to draw on practitioner insights and experiences in order to classify the effects of agile method use on technical debt management, given the popularity and perceived success of agile methods. We explore the breadth of practitioners’ knowledge about technical debt; how technical debt is manifested across the software process; and the perceived effects of common agile software development practices and processes on technical debt. In doing so, we address a research gap in technical debt knowledge and provide novel and actionable managerial recommendations. Method: We designed, tested and executed a multi-national survey questionnaire to address our objectives, receiving 184 responses from practitioners in Brazil, Finland, and New Zealand. Results: Our findings indicate that: 1) Practitioners are aware of technical debt, although, there was under utilization of the concept, 2) Technical debt commonly resides in legacy systems, however, concrete instances of technical debt are hard to conceptualize which makes it problematic to manage, 3) Queried agile practices and processes help to reduce technical debt; in particular, techniques that verify and maintain the structure and clarity of implemented artifacts (e.g., Coding standards and Refactoring) positively affect technical debt management. Conclusions: The fact that technical debt instances tend to have characteristics in common means that a systematic approach to its management is feasible. However, notwithstanding the positive effects of some agile practices on technical debt management, competing stakeholders’ interests remain a concern.

Exploring the links between software development task type, team attitudes and task completion performance: Insights from the Jazz repository

Abstract Context In seeking to better understand the impact of various human factors involved in software development, and how teams’ attitudes relate to their performance, increasing attention is being given to the study of team-related artefacts. In particular, researchers have conducted numerous studies on a range of team communication channels to explore links between developers’ language use and the incidence of software bugs in the products they delivered. Comparatively limited attention has been paid, however, to the full range of software tasks that are commonly performed during the development and delivery of software systems, in spite of compelling evidence pointing to the need to understand teams’ attitudes more widely. Objective We were therefore motivated to study the relationships between task type and team attitudes, and how attitudes expressed in teams’ communications might be related to their task completion performance when undertaking a range of activities. Method Our investigation involved artefacts from 474 IBM Jazz practitioners assembled in 149 teams working on around 30,000 software development tasks over a three-year period. We applied linguistic analysis, standard statistical techniques and directed content analysis to address our research objective. Results Our evidence revealed that teams expressed different attitudes when working on various forms of software tasks, and they were particularly emotional when working to remedy defects. That said, teams’ expression of attitudes was not found to be a strong predictor of their task completion performance. Conclusion Efforts aimed at reducing bug incidence may positively limit teams’ emotional disposition when resolving bugs, thereby reducing the otherwise high demand for emotionally stable members. In addition, in environments where teams work closely together to develop software such as in Agile contexts, attitudes are likely to have a bearing on how they function as a group.

Students’ perception of Kahoot!’s influence on teaching and learning

Technology is being increasingly integrated into teaching environments in view of enhancing students’ engagement and motivation. In particular, game-based student response systems have been found to foster students’ engagement, enhance classroom dynamics and improve overall students’ learning experience. This article presents outcomes of research that examined students’ experience using a game-based student response system, Kahoot!, in an Information Systems Strategy and Governance course at a research-intensive teaching university in New Zealand. We conducted semi-structured interviews with students to learn about the extent to which Kahoot! influence classroom dynamics, motivation and students’ learning process. Key findings revealed that Kahoot! enriched the quality of student learning in the classroom, with the highest influence reported on classroom dynamics, engagement, motivation and improved learning experience. Our findings also suggest that the use of educational games in the classroom is likely to minimise distractions, thereby improving the quality of teaching and learning beyond what is provided in conventional classrooms. Other factors that contributed to students’ enhanced learning included the creation and integration of appropriate content in Kahoot!, providing students with timely feedback, and game-play (gamification) strategies.

Crowdsourced Knowledge on Stack Overflow: A Systematic Mapping Study

Platforms such as Stack Overflow are available for software practitioners to solicit help and solutions to their challenges and knowledge needs. This communitys practices have in recent times however caused quality-related concerns. Academic work tends to provide validation for the practice and processes of these forums, however, previous work did not review the scale of scientific attention that is given to this cause. We conducted a Systematic Mapping study involving 266 papers from six relevant databases to address this gap. In this preliminary work we explored the level of academic interest Stack Overflow has generated, the publication venues, the topics studied and approaches used. Outcomes show that Stack Overflow has attracted increasing research interest, with topics relating to both community dynamics and human factors, and technical issues. In addition, research studies have been largely evaluative or proposed solutions, though this latter approach tends to lack validation. This signals the need for future work to explore the nature of Stack Overflow research contributions that are provided, and their quality. We outline our research agenda for continuing with such efforts.