How are software technologies being evaluated with autistic users? A systematic mapping

Universal Access in the Information Society - Evaluating software technologies with users is a way to ensure the software purpose is accomplished before the system becomes available to the final...     

Past and future of software architectural decisions – A systematic mapping study

ContextThe software architecture of a system is the result of a set of architectural decisions. The topic of architectural decisions in software engineering has received significant attention in recent years. However, no systematic overview exists on the state of research on architectural decisions.ObjectiveThe goal of this study is to provide a systematic overview of the state of research on architectural decisions. Such an overview helps researchers reflect on previous research and plan future research. Furthermore, such an overview helps practitioners understand the state of research, and how research results can help practitioners in their architectural decision-making.MethodWe conducted a systematic mapping study, covering studies published between January 2002 and January 2012. We defined six research questions. We queried six reference databases and obtained an initial result set of 28,895 papers. We followed a search and filtering process that resulted in 144 relevant papers.ResultsAfter classifying the 144 relevant papers for each research question, we found that current research focuses on documenting architectural decisions. We found that only several studies describe architectural decisions from the industry. We identified potential future research topics: domain-specific architectural decisions (such as mobile), achieving specific quality attributes (such as reliability or scalability), uncertainty in decision-making, and group architectural decisions. Regarding empirical evaluations of the papers, around half of the papers use systematic empirical evaluation approaches (such as surveys, or case studies). Still, few papers on architectural decisions use experiments.ConclusionOur study confirms the increasing interest in the topic of architectural decisions. This study helps the community reflect on the past ten years of research on architectural decisions. Researchers are offered a number of promising future research directions, while practitioners learn what existing papers offer.     

Empirical studies on the use of social software in global software development – A systematic mapping study

BackgroundIn Global Software Development (GSD), informal communication and knowledge sharing play an important role. Social Software (SoSo) has the potential to support and foster this key responsibility. Research on the use of SoSo in GSD is still at an early stage: although a number of empirical studies on the usage of SoSo are available in related fields, there exists no comprehensive overview of what has been investigated to date across them.ObjectiveThe aim of this review is to map empirical studies on the usage of SoSo in Software Engineering projects and in distributed teams, and to highlight the findings of research works which could prove to be beneficial for GSD researchers and practitioners.MethodA Systematic Mapping Study is conducted using a broad search string that allows identifying a variety of studies which can be beneficial for GSD. Papers have been retrieved through a combination of automatic search and snowballing, hence a wide quantitative map of the research area is provided. Additionally, text extracts from the studies are qualitatively synthesised to investigate benefits and challenges of the use of SoSo.ResultsSoSo is reported as being chiefly used as a support for collaborative work, fostering awareness, knowledge management and coordination among team members. Contrary to the evident high importance of the social aspects offered by SoSo, socialisation is not the most important usage reported.ConclusionsThis review reports how SoSo is used in GSD and how it is capable of supporting GSD teams. Four emerging themes in global software engineering were identified: the appropriation and development of usage structures; understanding how an ecology of communication channels and tools are used by teams; the role played by SoSo either as a subtext or as an explicit goal; and finally, the surprising low percentage of observational studies.     

Gamification in software engineering – A systematic mapping

ContextGamification seeks for improvement of the user’s engagement, motivation, and performance when carrying out a certain task, by means of incorporating game mechanics and elements, thus making that task more attractive. Much research work has studied the application of gamification in software engineering for increasing the engagement and results of developers.ObjectiveThe objective of this paper is to carry out a systematic mapping of the field of gamification in software engineering in an attempt to characterize the state of the art of this field identifying gaps and opportunities for further research.MethodWe carried out a systematic mapping with a view to finding the primary studies in the existing literature, which were later classified and analyzed according to four criteria: the software process area addressed, the gamification elements used, the type of research method followed, and the type of forum in which they were published. A subjective evaluation of the studies was also carried out to evaluate them in terms of methodology, empirical evidence, integration with the organization, and replicability.ResultsAs a result of the systematic mapping we found 29 primary studies, published between January 2011 and June 2014. Most of them focus on software development, and to a lesser extent, requirements, project management, and other support areas. In the main, they consider very simple gamification mechanics such as points and badges, and few provide empirical evidence of the impact of gamification.ConclusionsExisting research in the field is quite preliminary, and more research effort analyzing the impact of gamification in SE would be needed. Future research work should look at other game mechanics in addition to the basic ones and should tackle software process areas that have not been fully studied, such as requirements, project management, maintenance, or testing. Most studies share a lack of methodological support that would make their proposals replicable in other settings. The integration of gamification with an organization’s existing tools is also an important challenge that needs to be taken up in this field.     

What’s up with software metrics? - A preliminary mapping study

Background

Many papers are published on the topic of software metrics but it is difficult to assess the current status of metrics research.

Aim

This paper aims to identify trends in influential software metrics papers and assess the possibility of using secondary studies to integrate research results.

Method

Search facilities in the SCOPUS tool were used to identify the most cited papers in the years 2000-2005 inclusive. Less cited papers were also selected from 2005. The selected papers were classified according factors such as to main topic, goal and type (empirical or theoretical or mixed). Papers classified as “Evaluation studies” were assessed to investigate the extent to which results could be synthesized.

Results

Compared with less cited papers, the most cited papers were more frequently journal papers, and empirical validation or data analysis studies. However, there were problems with some empirical validation studies. For example, they sometimes attempted to evaluate theoretically invalid metrics and fail to appreciate the importance of the context in which data are collected.

Conclusions

This paper, together with other similar papers, confirms that there is a large body of research related to software metrics. However, software metrics researchers may need to refine their empirical methodology before they can answer useful empirical questions.     

Does maintainability relate to the energy consumption of software? A case study

Software Quality Journal - Energy consumption of software has been becoming increasingly significant, since it can vary according to how the software has been developed. In recent years, developers...     

How does social software change knowledge management? Toward a strategic research agenda

Knowledge management is commonly understood as IS implementations that enable processes of knowledge creation, sharing, and capture. Knowledge management at the firm level is changing rapidly. Previous approaches included centrally managed, proprietary knowledge repositories, often involving structured and controlled search and access. Today the trend is toward knowledge management by social software, which provides open and inexpensive alternatives to traditional implementations. While social software carries great promise for knowledge management, this also raises fundamental questions about the very essence and value of firm knowledge, the possibility for knowledge protection, firm boundaries, and the sources of competitive advantage. I draft a strategic research agenda consisting of five fundamental issues that should reinvigorate research in knowledge management.     

What could they have been thinking? How sociotechnical system design influences cognition: a case study of the Stockwell shooting

Understanding why an individual acted in a certain way is of fundamental importance to the human factors community, especially when the choice of action results in an undesirable outcome. This challenge is typically tackled by applying retrospective interview techniques to generate models of what happened, recording deviations from a 'correct procedure'. While such approaches may have great utility in tightly constrained procedural environments, they are less applicable in complex sociotechnical systems that require individuals to modify procedures in real time to respond to a changing environment. For complex sociotechnical systems, a formative approach is required that maps the information available to the individual and considers its impact on performance and action. A context-specific, activity-independent, constraint-based model forms the basis of this approach. To illustrate, an example of the Stockwell shooting is used, where an innocent man, mistaken for a suicide bomber, was shot dead. Transferable findings are then presented. STATEMENT OF RELEVANCE: This paper presents a new approach that can be applied proactively to consider how sociotechnical system design, and the information available to an individual, can affect their performance. The approach is proposed to be complementary to the existing tools in the mental models phase of the cognitive work analysis framework.     

How influential has academic and industrial research been in current software life cycles? A retrospective analysis of four mainstream activities

ContextKnowledge transfer is an important responsibility of universities and research institutes as part of their contribution to society. In the field of software engineering, several studies have been performed to show the influence of research in popular technologies such as middleware systems. However, there is no scholarly analysis of the influence that research has had in mainstream activities of current software life cycles.ObjectiveWe analyse how methodological research has influenced activities of widespread use in current software life cycles. To keep this goal into manageable bounds, we focus on four very successful trends of current practice: iterative development, architecture-centric development, requirements-driven development, and coherent method integration.MethodWe follow different forms of evidence backwards in time. As signs of influence we admit the following categories: citations included in papers and standards, interviews, historical essays, people movement, and acquisitions of companies.ResultsFor each one of the mentioned activities, we obtain a trace diagram showing the indirect influence that pieces of research have had in the selected activities of software life cycles.ConclusionsOur results support the following claims: (1) mainstream dissemination of the analysed methodological research has taken on the order of 20–40 years; (2) interdisciplinarity has been important in the research that influenced some very popular activities of current software life cycles; (3) research on life cycles is more influential when it originates from large development projects; and (4) probably the best results can be obtained if industrial research goes hand in hand with academic research.     

How can ergonomics influence design? Moving from research findings to future systems

Ergonomics design is about the creation of future work. So how can ergonomics research support and inform design if its findings are cast in a language oriented towards current work derived from field observations or laboratory settings? In this paper we assess instances of three different strands (experimental, ethnomethodological, and surveys) of ergonomics research on paper flight strips in air traffic control, for how they analytically confront future work and how they make the findings relevant or credible with respect to future work. How these justifications come about, or how valid (or well argued for) they are, is rarely considered in the ergonomics literature. All three strands appear to rely on rhetoric and argument as well as method and analysis, to justify findings in terms of their future applicability. Closing the gap between research results and future work is an important aim of the ergonomic enterprise. Better understanding of the processes necessary to bridge this gap may be critical for progress in ergonomics research and for the use of its findings in actual design processes.     

How can ergonomics influence design? Moving from research findings to future systems

Ergonomics design is about the creation of future work. So how can ergonomics research support and inform design if its findings are cast in a language oriented towards current work derived from field observations or laboratory settings? In this paper we assess instances of three different strands (experimental, ethnomethodological, and surveys) of ergonomics research on paper flight strips in air traffic control, for how they analytically confront future work and how they make the findings relevant or credible with respect to future work. How these justifications come about, or how valid (or well argued for) they are, is rarely considered in the ergonomics literature. All three strands appear to rely on rhetoric and argument as well as method and analysis, to justify findings in terms of their future applicability. Closing the gap between research results and future work is an important aim of the ergonomic enterprise. Better understanding of the processes necessary to bridge this gap may be critical for progress in ergonomics research and for the use of its findings in actual design processes.     

Adoption of open source software in software-intensive organizations – A systematic literature review

ContextOpen source software (OSS) is changing the way organizations develop, acquire, use, and commercialize software.ObjectiveThis paper seeks to identify how organizations adopt OSS, classify the literature according to these ways of adopting OSS, and with a focus on software development evaluate the research on adoption of OSS in organizations.MethodBased on the systematic literature review method we reviewed publications from 24 journals and seven conference and workshop proceedings, published between 1998 and 2008. From a population of 24,289 papers, we identified 112 papers that provide empirical evidence on how organizations actually adopt OSS.ResultsWe show that adopting OSS involves more than simply using OSS products. We moreover provide a classification framework consisting of six distinctly different ways in which organizations adopt OSS. This framework is used to illustrate some of the opportunities and challenges organizations meet when approaching OSS, to show that OSS can be adopted successfully in different ways, and to organize and review existing research. We find that existing research on OSS adoption does not sufficiently describe the context of the organizations studied, and it fails to benefit fully from related research fields. While existing research covers a large number of topics, it contains very few closely related studies. To aid this situation, we offer directions for future research.ConclusionThe implications of our findings are twofold. On the one hand, practitioners should embrace the many opportunities OSS offers, but consciously evaluate the consequences of adopting it in their own context. They may use our framework and the success stories provided by the literature in their own evaluations. On the other hand, researchers should align their work, and perform more empirical research on topics that are important to organizations. Our framework may be used to position this research and to describe the context of the organization they are studying.     

Newton's method revisited: How accurate do we have to be?

We analyze the convergence of quasi-Newton methods in exact and finite precision arithmetic using three different techniques. We derive an upper bound for the stagnation level and we show that any sufficiently exact quasi-Newton method will converge quadratically until stagnation. In the absence of sufficient accuracy, we are likely to retain rapid linear convergence. We confirm our analysis by computing square roots and solving bond constraint equations in the context of molecular dynamics. In particular, we apply both a symmetric variant and Forsgren's variant of the simplified Newton method. This work has implications for the implementation of quasi-Newton methods regardless of the scale of the calculation or the machine.     

Instructional design or school politics? A discussion of ‘orchestration' in TEL research

This paper argues that the emphasis on orchestration as a metaphor for teaching in technology‐enhanced learning (TEL) environments, featured in recent academic discussions, is an opportunity to broaden the scope of the inquiry into educational technology. Drawing on sociological literature and research that investigated the systemic factors that influence the uptake of information and communication technologies in formal and informal learning contexts, the paper contends that a focus on instructional design does insufficient justice to the complexities of actual technology use in classrooms and after‐school programs. It is suggested, instead, that orchestration might better be used as a heuristic device to deepen our understandings of the relationships between power, bestowed on teachers or claimed by them through a number of strategies, educational technology, and teaching practices. The paper concludes that to fully understand this relationship and to support teachers, concern should be given equally to the existing political and cultural dynamics of TEL environments. Examples of orchestration as a political, cultural process are provided, illustrating how teachers appropriate technology and ‘innovative’ pedagogies to negotiate power.     

A replicated survey of software testing practices in the Canadian province of Alberta: What has changed from 2004 to 2009?

Software organizations have typically de-emphasized the importance of software testing. In an earlier study in 2004, our colleagues reported the results of an Alberta-wide regional survey of software testing techniques in practice. Five years after that first study, the authors felt it is time to replicate the survey and analyze what has changed and what not from 2004 to 2009. This study was conducted during the summer of 2009 by surveying software organizations in the Canadian province of Alberta. The survey results reveal important and interesting findings about software testing practices in Alberta, and point out what has changed from 2004 to 2009 and what not. Note that although our study is conducted in the province of Alberta, we have compared the results to few international similar studies, such as the ones conducted in the US, Turkey, Hong Kong and Australia, The study should thus be of interest to all testing professionals world-wide. Among the findings are the followings: (1) almost all companies perform unit and system testing with a slight increase since 2004, (2) automation of unit, integration and systems tests has increased sharply since 2004, (3) more organization are using observations and expert opinion to conduct usability testing, (4) the choices of test-case generation mechanisms have not changed much from 2004, (5) JUnit and IBM Rational tools are the most widely used test tools, (6) Alberta companies still face approximately the same defect-related economic issues as do companies in other jurisdictions, (7) Alberta software firms have improved their test automation capability since 2004, but there is still some room for improvement, and (8) compared to 2004, more companies are spending more effort on pre-release testing.     

An industrial study on the importance of software component documentation: A system integrator?s perspective

Component integration is widely recognized as a process which plays a central role in overall Component Based System (CBS) development. A system integrator focuses on assembling existing components, developed by different parties, to build a software system. The integration process usually involves adapting existing component interfaces and writing new functions to handle the mismatches between stakeholder needs and available component features. The lack of detailed component documentation has been a key area of concern in CBS development due to its profound impact on the integration phase of a CBS development life cycle. In this paper, we report results of an industrial survey conducted among system integrators to understand role of component documentation in the CBS integration phase. The survey investigates whether the presence of component documentation helps a system integrator and its correlations with typical CBS integration success factors. The result reinforces current perceptions of the significance of component documentation in CBS integration. However, the lack of comprehensive component documentation presents a potential risk for a system integrator during integration effort estimation and testing processes.     

Multi-objective hardware–software partitioning of embedded systems: A case study of JPEG encoder

Embedded systems have become integral parts of today's technology-based life, starting from various home appliances to satellites. Such a wide range of applications encourages for their economic design using optimization-based tools. The JPEG encoder is an embedded system, which is applied for obtaining high quality output from continuous-tone images. It has emerged in recent years as a problem of optimum partitioning of its various processes into hardware and software components. Realizing pairing and conflicting nature among its various cost terms, for the first time the JPEG encoder is formulated and partitioned here as a multi-objective optimization problem. A multi-objective binary-coded genetic algorithm is proposed for this purpose, whose effectiveness is demonstrated through the application to a real case study and a number of large-size hypothetical instances.