| 1. |
- Andersson, Carina, et al.
(författare)
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Verification and validation in industry - a qualitative survey on the state of practice
- 2002
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Ingår i: 2002 International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering Proceedings. - IEEE Computer Society. - 0-7695-1796-X ; s. 37-47
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Verification and validation activities take a substantial share of project budgets and need improvements. This is an accepted truth, but the current practices are seldom assessed and analyzed. In this paper we present a qualitative survey of the verification and validation processes at 11 Swedish companies. The purpose was to exchange experience between the companies and to lay out a foundation for further research on the topic. The survey is conducted through workshop and interview sessions, loosely guided by a questionnaire scheme. It is concluded from the survey that there are substantial differences between small and large companies. In large companies, the documented process is emphasized while in small companies, single key, persons have a dominating impact on the procedures. Large companies use commercial tools while small companies make in-house tools or use shareware. Common to all the surveyed companies is that verification and validation is considered important, and thus having rather high status. Information exchange between companies during the survey was considered to be very valuable to the involved subjects
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| 2. |
- Rönkkö, Kari, et al.
(författare)
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Bad Practice or Bad Methods Are Software Engineering and Ethnographic Discourses Incompatible?
- 2002
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Ingår i: 2002 International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering. - 0 7695 1796 X ; s. 204-10
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Organizational problems in industry have evoked increased interest in empirical methodologies in the broader software engineering community. In this article ethnography and its relation to software engineering is addressed. Until now sociologists have performed the majority of ethnographic studies on software development. But how useful are these studies for software engineering? Ethnography emphasizes the members' point of view in order to understand the social. Studies from the members' perspective can be interpreted, as revealing 'bad methods' that do not work in complex work situations. From a software engineering point of view, they are just as easy point to the opposite as 'bad practice', bad application of existing methods. The objective of this paper is to promote ethnography and its contribution to software engineering by revealing the different research attitudes of ethnographers and software engineers. Possibilities how to combine ethnographic studies with software method improvement are indicated.
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| 3. |
- Thelin, Thomas, et al.
(författare)
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How much information is needed for usage-based reading? A series of experiments
- 2002
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Ingår i: 2002 International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering Proceedings. - IEEE Comput. Soc. - 0-7695-1796-X ; s. 127-138
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Software inspections are regarded as an important technique to detect faults throughout the software development process. The individual preparation phase of software inspections has enlarged its focus from only comprehension to also include fault searching. Hence, reading techniques to support the reviewers on fault detection are needed. Usage-based reading (UBR) is a reading technique, which focuses on the important parts of a software document by using prioritized use cases. This paper presents a series of three UBR experiments on design specifications, with focus on the third. The first experiment evaluates the prioritization of UBR and the second compares UBR against checklist-based reading. The third experiment investigates the amount of information needed in the use cases and whether a more active approach helps the reviewers to detect more faults. The third study was conducted at two different places with a total of 82 subjects. The general result from the experiments is that UBR works as intended and is efficient as well as effective in guiding reviewers during the preparation phase of software inspections. Furthermore, the results indicate that use cases developed in advance are preferable compared to developing them as part of the preparation phase of the inspection
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| 4. |
- Wohlin, Claes
(författare)
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Is Prior Knowledge of a Programming Language Important for Software Quality?
- 2002
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Ingår i: 1st International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering. - 0 7695 1796 X ; s. 27-34
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Software engineering is human intensive. Thus, it is important to understand and evaluate the value of different types of experiences, and their relation to the quality of the developed software. Many job advertisements focus on requiring knowledge of specific programming languages. This may seem sensible at first sight, but maybe it is sufficient to have general knowledge in programming and then it is enough to learn a specific language within the new job. A key question is whether prior knowledge actually does improve software quality. This paper presents an empirical study where the programming experience of students is assessed using a survey at the beginning of a course on the Personal Software Process (PSP), and the outcome of the course is evaluated, for example, using the number of defects and development time. Statistical tests are used to analyse the relationship between programming experience and the performance of the students in terms of software quality. The results are mostly unexpected, for example, we are unable to show any significant relation between experience in the programming language used and the number of defects detected.
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