In Search of What We Experimentally Know about Unit Testing

Gathering evidence in any discipline is a lengthy procedure, requiring experimentation and empirical confirmation to transform information from mere opinion to undisputed fact. Software engineering is a relatively young field and experimental SE is even younger, so undisputed facts are few and far between. Nevertheless, ESE's relevance is growing because experimental results can help practitioners make better decisions. We have aggregated results from unit-testing experiments with the aim of identifying information with some experimental basis that might help practitioners make decisions. Most of the experiments focus on two important characteristics of testing techniques: effectiveness and efficiency. Some other experiments study the quality of test-case sets according to different criteria     

Can we teach digital natives digital literacy?

In recent years, there has been much debate about the concept of digital natives, in particular the differences between the digital natives' knowledge and adoption of digital technologies in informal versus formal educational contexts. This paper investigates the knowledge about educational technologies of a group of undergraduate students studying the course Introduction to eLearning at a university in Australia and how they adopt unfamiliar technologies into their learning. The study explores the 'digital nativeness' of these students by investigating their degree of digital literacy and the ease with which they learn to make use of unfamiliar technologies. The findings show that the undergraduates were generally able to use unfamiliar technologies easily in their learning to create useful artefacts. They need, however to be made aware of what constitutes educational technologies and be provided with the opportunity to use them for meaningful purposes. The self-perception measures of the study indicated that digital natives can be taught digital literacy.     

Social Comparison,Goal Contagion,and Adoption of Innovative Information Technology

When adopting a new, innovative information technology (IT), most institutions tend to lack knowledge about it initially. However, they often adopt new ITs despite their illiteracy. This behavior is difficult to explain using rational IT adoption theories. Focusing on the organizational decision-making process behind adoption of innovative IT, we examine the strategy by which some companies compensate for their lack of knowledge: collection of information from other companies that have successfully adopted IT previously. We develop a new IT adoption model for which goal contagion theory and social comparison theory are combined to interpret the circumstances under which organizations tend to adopt new, innovative IT despite limited knowledge about it. Big data, cloud services, and smart mobile systems are considered as examples of innovative IT in the empirical study.     

System 1 and System 2 cognition in the decision to adopt and use a new technology

Most models of technology adoption and use assume a rational decision maker engaged in thoughtful deliberate consideration of the new technology. However, recent research in psychology concludes that such deliberate, rational, conscious decision-making (termed System 2 cognition) has less influence on behavior than originally thought; nonconscious automatic cognition (termed System 1 cognition), which is often influenced by personality characteristics and pattern matching based on past experience, also plays a key role in most decisions. As users adopt and use new technologies time and time again, a set of general expectations about new technology adoption begins to emerge. A user’s personality combined with this pattern of positive and negative experiences creates System 1 heuristics that are triggered when a user faces a similar decision in the future. The focus of this paper is to examine the extent to which the predispositions produced by System 1 automatic cognition – both enabling and inhibiting – versus the deliberate technology assessment produced by System 2 cognition influence technology adoption and use. We found that enabling predispositions influences the formation of intentions to use a new technology, and both enabling and inhibiting predispositions influence an individual’s ultimate follow through in acting on his or her intentions and actually using new technologies. Our research suggests that concepts previously seen as “determinants” of technology adoption and use (e.g., performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, and facilitating conditions) are not really determinants but rather are important partial mediators in a larger nomological network that includes both automatic System 1 cognition and deliberate System 2 cognition.     

Examination of the factors that influence the technological adoption intentions of tomorrow’s new media producers: A longitudinal exploration

In a world awash with digital media, employers in mass communication professions are increasingly searching for and hiring employees with both traditional and new media production skills. As such, post-secondary institutions have, en masse, begun to incorporate instruction on multimedia production into their curricula. Despite this widespread integration of new media into coursework, administrators, instructors, and students are still searching for best practices as they relate to efficient and effective delivery of instruction. In light of such needs, this study used the technological acceptance model and structural equation modeling to explore, on a longitudinal basis, the psychological factors that influence mass communication students’ adoption of new media production technologies. Our results demonstrated that subjective, normative influences play an increasingly powerful role in student adoption decisions over time. Furthermore, the data indicated that usefulness perceptions were the strongest predictor of student decisions to adopt new media production technologies.     

The role of attributional judgments when adopted computing technology fails: a comparison of Microsoft Windows PC user perceptions of Windows and Macs

The bulk of research to date on diffusion of innovations and the user acceptance of computing technology has focused on modelling the factors that lead to a user's decision to adopt and use a technology, instead of how individuals use technology and experience it after adoption. The current paper explores how users rationalise failures in their adopted innovations; their biases in the assessment of competing technologies; and the ultimate influence of these attributions on their interpersonal word of mouth communication with other users. The findings of the research point to the mechanisms of ego enhancement and innovativeness influencing users’ reactions to the failure of their adopted computing technology. Biases regarding competing technologies are, however, influenced by information presented in the mass media. Experienced users and users who are technologically innovative are more likely to exhibit biased optimism towards the technology they have adopted. When such users hear about the failure of the computing technology they have adopted, they are far more likely to blame other users for it. In contrast, less innovative, later adopters of a technology are far more likely to blame their adopted technology and consider it to be inferior.     

Are ATM, Gigabit Ethernet ready for prime time

ATM and Gigabit Ethernet, the subjects of intense speculation by industry observers and potential users of the technologies, appear as if they may be ready to begin competing for their place in the networking sun. The demand for both technologies is being caused by the increasing adoption of Internet and intranet technology and the growing number of bandwidth-hungry applications. These factors make it necessary to move an increasing amount of data at faster rates over networks. Enterprises are thus beginning to adopt ATM and Gigabit Ethernet. In some cases, the two technologies are replacing FDDI backbones because they can be less expensive and provide higher speeds. In addition, ATM has quality of service features, while Gigabit Ethernet can provide seamless connectivity throughout LANs that already use Ethernet technology. Both technologies provide LAN services, such as scalable campus backbones, load sharing, and connections to WAN services. ATM has been available longer and is being deployed where high bandwidth performance is required. ATM and Gigabit Ethernet involve a variety of complex issues that will, in part, determine whether and how users adopt either or both technologies     

Digital Inclusion in Rural Areas: A Qualitative Exploration of Challenges Faced by People From Isolated Communities

This study explored the interplay between contextual and individual factors related to Internet adoption in isolated rural communities. By investigating 10 remote villages throughout Chile that received Internet access infrastructure in 2010–2011, we identified 3 areas in which contextual and individual factors are intertwined. First, the geographical isolation shaped people's personality and attitudes towards new experiences, including digital technologies. Second, the communities' aging population also represented a strong challenge because they lack young people, a relevant technology socialization agent. Finally, jobs and economic activities are related to people's (lack of) motivations and needs towards digital technologies. When the Internet has reached the vast majority of the population, isolated communities confront specific challenges that we need to consider in policy‐making decisions.     

Rational expectations, optimal control and information technology adoption

The existing economics and IS literature on technology adoption often considers network externalities as one of the main factors that affect adoption decisions. It assumes that potential adopters achieve a certain level of expectations about network externalities when they have to decide whether to adopt a particular technology. However, there has been little discussion on how the potential adopters reach their expectations. This article attempts to fill a gap in the literature on adoption of information technology (IT), by offering an optimal control perspective motivated by the rational expectations hypothesis (REH) and exploring the process dynamics associated with the actions of decision makers who must adjust their expectations about the benefits of a new technology over time due to bounded rationality. Our model primarily addresses technologies that exhibit strong network externalities. It stresses adaptive learning to show why different firms that initially have heterogeneous expectations about the potential value of a technology eventually are able to arrive at contemporaneous decisions to adopt the same technology, creating the desired network externalities. This further allows the firms to become catalysts to facilitate processes that lead to market-wide adoption. We also discuss the conditions under which adoption inertia will take over in the marketplace, and the related managerial implications.Acknowledgement The authors wish to thank the participants in the Information and Decision Sciences Workshop at Carlson School of Management of University of Minnesota, and the anonymous reviewers of this article and a related paper for helpful suggestions. We also appreciate input offered by Norm Chervany, Eric Clemons, Gordon Davis, Rajiv Dewan, Fred Riggins, Paul Glewwe, Paul Johnson, Rajiv Sabherwal, Jan Stallaert and Chuck Wood. An earlier version of this research appeared in the Proceedings of the 2002 INFORMS Conference on Information Systems and Technology, and reflects the input of several helpful reviewers. A related paper is Au, Y. A., and Kauffman, R. J., What Do You Know? Rational Expectations and Information Technology Investment, Journal of Management Information Systems, 20, 2 (Fall 2003), 49–76.     

Marketing technology to software practitioners

We can learn much from the business community about effective technology transfer. In particular, understanding the interests of different types of adopters can suggest to us the different kinds of evidence needed to convince someone to try an innovative technology. At the same time, the legal community offers us advice about what kinds of evidence are needed to build convincing cases that an innovation is an improvement over current practice. The article examines why and how we make technology selection decisions and also considers how evidence supporting these decisions helps or hinders the adoption of new technology     

Organizational adoption of open source software

Organizations and individuals can use open source software (OSS) for free, they can study its internal workings, and they can even fix it or modify it to make it suit their particular needs. These attributes make OSS an enticing technological choice for a company. Unfortunately, because most enterprises view technology as a proprietary differentiating element of their operation, little is known about the extent of OSS adoption in industry and the key drivers behind adoption decisions. In this article we examine factors and behaviors associated with the adoption of OSS and provide empirical findings through data gathered from the US Fortune-1000 companies. The data come from each company's web browsing and serving activities, gathered by sifting through more than 278 million web server log records and analyzing the results of thousands of network probes. We show that the adoption of OSS in large US companies is significant and is increasing over time through a low-churn transition, advancing from applications to platforms. Its adoption is a pragmatic decision influenced by network effects. It is likelier in larger organizations and those with many less productive employees, and is associated with IT and knowledge-intensive work and operating efficiencies.     

Adopting a software security improvement program

Leading software shops (including Microsoft) are working hard to improve the way they build security into their products. Software security initiatives have proven beneficial for those organizations that have implemented them. Such initiatives involve the adoption and rollout of various types of best practices. The article describes an approach that works, with an emphasis on business process engineering that might be unfamiliar to technical practitioners. By following some commonsense steps, a software security improvement program has a greater chance of achieving its ultimate goal: software security that makes business sense.     

Maneuvering between skepticism and optimism about hyped technologies: Building trust in digital twins

IT vendors’ promises are likely to meet sound skepticism from prospective clients. If a particular technology is in vogue and seen as a “hype,” clients are under pressure to buy the technology while, at the same time, skepticism about its claimed benefits might be reinforced. Finding a balance between optimism and skepticism is essential. In this qualitative case study, we examine how an oil and gas supplier company in Norway deals with different pressures when adopting and subsequently implementing digital twin (DT) technologies. DTs offer the promise of creating a digital representation of the physical assets that can keep production facilities operating efficiently and optimally and, as such, have been heralded as enabling the next frontier of productivity improvements. Our results reveal a set of different pressures promoting the decision to adopt the hyped technology. Yet, when descended to the local context, the hype status of DTs evokes multilevel perception segmentation that hype interpreters maneuver by building trust. Based on this analysis, we propose a framework of trust-building mechanisms that contribute to a more nuanced understanding of adoption of hyped technologies and enable practitioners to deal with hype-induced perception obstacles.     

Converting relational database into XML documents with DOM

The revolution of XML is recognized as the trend of technology on the Internet to researchers as well as practitioners. Companies need to adopt XML technology. With investment in the current relational database systems, they want to develop new XML documents while running existing relational databases on production. They need to reengineer the relational databases into XML documents with constraints preservation. In the process, schema translation must be done before data conversion. Since the existing relational databases are usually normalized, they have to be reconstructed into XML document tree structures. This can be accomplished through denormalization by joining the normalized relations into tables according to their data dependencies constraints. The joined tables are mapped into DOMs, which are then integrated into XML document trees. The user specifies an XML document root with its relevant nodes to form a partitioned XML document tree to meet their requirements. The selected XML document tree is mapped into an XML schema in the form of DTD. We then load joined tables into DOMs, integrate them into a DOM, and transform it into an XML document.     

Applying an organizational learning perspective to new technology deployment by technological gatekeepers: A theoretical model and key issues for future research

Organizations often under-utilize expensive information technology (IT) enabled work processes that automate routines or processes that were previously carried out manually. One reason for this phenomenon may lie in the types of decisions made by technological gatekeepers, who are key individuals charged with deploying new technologies in organizations. From an organizational learning perspective, technological gatekeepers are more likely to perform successfully when they make appropriate decisions about exploring or exploiting the routines associated with a new technology. The factors that influence gatekeepers’ decisions about exploration or exploitation, however, are still largely unexplored. In this study, we present a model based on the basic technology acceptance model (TAM) to examine this issue. We use concepts from the literatures on organizational learning, expertise, and cognitive styles to elaborate on the constructs in our model, and examine how these literatures can inform our understanding of technological gatekeepers’ decisions. The goal of this paper is to accelerate micro-level research on new technology deployment in organizations by identifying some key issues and propositions for future studies.     

Toward code-free business application development

Conventional wisdom holds that building high-end business applications is unavoidably difficult because applications and the technology for implementing them are complex. Empirical evidence from real projects amply reinforces this conclusion. It can be argued that spiraling technical complexity makes it difficult to focus on the application's core business problem. Software development is gradually enabling people to express what they want from their business applications in increasingly human terms. More highly evolved development tools are one way to accelerate this trend     

Declarative GUI Programming in Microsoft Windows

"Software technology" will provide concise, hands-on information on hot software technologies early in their life cycle. Its objective is to promote sharing of technology experiences from a user perspective. We'll look at promising software components, technologies, and development tools and ask questions about their maturity, applications, readiness, and business cases. Early adopter experience will be highlighted, including how to deal with conflicting product development standards. Our vision is to interpret the software technology hype cycle and provide down-to-earth, useful information for practitioners. The inaugural column is on GUI programming for Microsoft Windows. Although this topic isn't new-we've struggled with it for decades-both Windows and its supporting GUI technologies are changing.     

Teacher adoption of technology

Technology adoption is usually modeled as a process with dynamic transitions between costs and benefits. Nevertheless, school teachers do not generally make effective use of technology in their teaching. This article describes a study designed to exhibit the interplay between two variables: the type of technology, in terms of its complexity of use, and the type of teacher, in terms of attitude towards innovation. The results from this study include: (a) elaboration of a characteristic teacher technology adoption process, based on an existing learning curve for new technology proposed for software development; and (b) presentation of exit points during the technology adoption process. This paper concludes that teachers who are early technology adopters and commit a significant portion of their time to incorporating educational technology into their teaching are more likely to adopt new technology, regardless of its complexity. However, teachers who are not early technology adopters and commit a small portion of their time to integrating educational technology are less likely to adopt new technology and are prone to abandoning the adoption at identified points in the process.     

Herd behavior in information security decision-making

Current information security behavior research assumes that lone individuals make a rational, informed decision about security technologies based on careful consideration of personally available information. We challenge this assumption by examining how the herd behavior influences users’ security decisions when coping with security threats. The results show that uncertainty about a security technology leads users to discount their own information and imitate others. We found that imitation tendency has a more substantial effect on security decisions than the personal perceived efficacy of the security technology. It is essential for researchers and managers to consider how the herd behavior effect influences users' security decisions.     

Analysis of emerging technology adoption for the digital content market

The digital content market is undergoing an evolution in networking and digitalization technologies, offering diverse information and services. Due to the characteristics of these emerging technologies, the digital content market is growing rapidly and traditional content providers face service transformation decisions. While a majority of the previous technology adoption studies have focused on the viewpoints of users and customers, cost reduction, or electronic channel related technologies, in this research we analyze the emerging technology adoption decisions of competing firms for providing new content services from a strategic perspective. Utilizing game theoretical models, we examine the effects of market environments (technology cost, channel cannibalization, brand power, brand extension, information asymmetry and market uncertainty) on firms’ adoption decisions. This research contributes a number of unique and interesting implications for the issues of emerging technology adoption for new content service provision.