| 1. |
- Fagerholm, F., et al.
(författare)
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Cognition in Software Engineering: A Taxonomy and Survey of a Half-Century of Research
- 2022
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Ingår i: Acm Computing Surveys. - : Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). - 0360-0300 .- 1557-7341. ; 54:11
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Cognition plays a fundamental role in most software engineering activities. This article provides a taxonomy of cognitive concepts and a survey of the literature since the beginning of the Software Engineering discipline. The taxonomy comprises the top-level concepts of perception, attention, memory, cognitive load, reasoning, cognitive biases, knowledge, social cognition, cognitive control, and errors, and procedures to assess them both qualitatively and quantitatively. The taxonomy provides a useful tool to filter existing studies, classify new studies, and support researchers in getting familiar with a (sub) area. In the literature survey, we systematically collected and analysed 311 scientific papers spanning five decades and classified them using the cognitive concepts from the taxonomy. Our analysis shows that the most developed areas of research correspond to the four life-cycle stages, software requirements, design, construction, and maintenance. Most research is quantitative and focuses on knowledge, cognitive load, memory, and reasoning. Overall, the state of the art appears fragmented when viewed from the perspective of cognition. There is a lack of use of cognitive concepts that would represent a coherent picture of the cognitive processes active in specific tasks. Accordingly, we discuss the research gap in each cognitive concept and provide recommendations for future research.
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| 2. |
- Gren, Lucas, 1984, et al.
(författare)
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Group development and group maturity when building agile teams: A qualitative and quantitative investigation at eight large companies
- 2017
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Ingår i: Journal of Systems and Software. - : Elsevier BV. - 0164-1212 .- 1873-1228. ; 124, s. 104-119
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The agile approach to projects focuses more on close-knit teams than traditional waterfall projects, which means that aspects of group maturity become even more important. This psychological aspect is not much researched in connection to the building of an "agile team." The purpose of this study is to investigate how building agile teams is connected to a group development model taken from social psychology. We conducted ten semi-structured interviews with coaches, Scrum Masters, and managers responsible for the agile process from seven different companies, and collected survey data from 66 group-members from four companies (a total of eight different companies). The survey included an agile measurement tool and the one part of the Group Development Questionnaire. The results show that the practitioners define group developmental aspects as key factors to a successful agile transition. Also, the quantitative measurement of agility was significantly correlated to the group maturity measurement. We conclude that adding these psychological aspects to the description of the "agile team" could increase the understanding of agility and partly help define an "agile team." We propose that future work should develop specific guidelines for how software development teams at different maturity levels might adopt agile principles and practices differently. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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| 3. |
- Gren, Lucas, 1984, et al.
(författare)
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Group Maturity and Agility, Are They Connected? - A Survey Study
- 2015
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Ingår i: EUROMICRO Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications (SEAA 2015), August 26-28. - : IEEE. - 9781467375856
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- The focus on psychology has increased within software engineering due to the project management innovation "agile development processes". The agile methods do not explicitly consider group development aspects, they simply assume what is described in group psychology as mature groups. This study was conducted with 45 employees and their twelve managers (N=57) from two SAP customers in the US that were working with agile methods, and the data were collected via an online survey. The selected Agility measurement was correlated to a Group Development measurement and showed significant convergent validity, i.e., A more mature team is also a more agile team. This means that the agile methods probably would benefit from taking group development into account when its practices are being introduced.
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| 4. |
- Gren, Lucas, 1984, et al.
(författare)
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The Prospects of a Quantitative Measurement of Agility: A Validation Study on an Agile Maturity Model
- 2015
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Ingår i: Journal of Systems and Software. - : Elsevier BV. - 0164-1212 .- 1873-1228. ; 107, s. 38-49
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Agile development has now become a well-known approach to collaboration in professional work life. Both researchers and practitioners want validated tools to measure agility. This study sets out to validate an agile maturity measurement model with statistical tests and empirical data. First, a pretest was conducted as a case study including a survey and focus group. Second, the main study was conducted with 45 employees from two SAP customers in the US. We used internal consistency (by a Cronbach’s alpha) as the main measure for reliability and analyzed construct validity by exploratory principal factor analysis (PFA). The results suggest a new categorization of a subset of items existing in the tool and provides empirical support for these new groups of factors. However, we argue that more work is needed to reach the point where a maturity models with quantitative data can be said to validly measure agility, and even then, such a measurement still needs to include some deeper analysis with cultural and contextual items.
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| 5. |
- Gren, Lucas, 1984, et al.
(författare)
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Work Motivational Challenges Regarding the Interface Between Agile Teams and a Non-Agile Surrounding Organization: A case study
- 2014
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Ingår i: Agile Conference (AGILE), 2014. July 28 2014-Aug.. - : IEEE Press. - 9780769552224 ; , s. 11-15
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- There are studies showing what happens if agile teams are introduced into a non-agile organization, e.g. higher overhead costs and the necessity of an understanding of agile methods even outside the teams. This case study shows an example of work motivational aspects that might surface when an agile team exists in the middle of a more traditional structure. This case study was conducted at a car manufacturer in Sweden, consisting of an unstructured interview with the Scrum Master and a semi-structured focus group. The results show that the teams felt that the feedback from the surrounding organization was unsynchronized resulting in them not feeling appreciated when delivering their work. Moreover, they felt frustrated when working on non-agile teams after have been working on agile ones. This study concludes that there were work motivational affects of fitting an agile team into a non-agile surrounding organization, and therefore this might also be true for other organizations.
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| 6. |
- Kashfi, Pariya, 1980, et al.
(författare)
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A conceptual ux-aware model of requirements
- 2016
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Ingår i: Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics). - Cham : Springer International Publishing. - 1611-3349 .- 0302-9743. - 9783319449012 ; 9856, s. 234-245, s. 234-245
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- User eXperience (UX) is becoming increasingly important for success of software products. Yet, many companies still face various challenges in their work with UX. Part of these challenges relate to inadequate knowledge and awareness of UX and that current UX models are commonly not practical nor well integrated into existing Software Engineering (SE) models and concepts. Therefore, we present a conceptual UX-aware model of requirements for software development practitioners. This layered model shows the interrelation between UX and functional and quality requirements. The model is developed based on current models of UX and software quality characteristics. Through the model we highlight the main differences between various requirement types in particular essentially subjective and accidentally subjective quality requirements. We also present the result of an initial validation of the model through interviews with 12 practitioners and researchers. Our results show that the model can raise practitioners’ knowledge and awareness of UX in particular in relation to requirement and testing activities. It can also facilitate UX-related communication among stakeholders with different backgrounds.
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| 7. |
- Lenberg, Per, 1976, et al.
(författare)
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An initial analysis of software engineers’ attitudes towards organizational change
- 2017
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Ingår i: Empirical Software Engineering. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1382-3256 .- 1573-7616. ; 22, s. 2179-2205
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- © 2016, The Author(s). Employees’ attitudes towards organizational change are a critical determinant in the change process. Researchers have therefore tried to determine what underlying concepts that affect them. These extensive efforts have resulted in the identification of several antecedents. However, no studies have been conducted in a software engineering context and the research has provided little information on the relative impact and importance of the identified concepts. In this study, we have combined results from previous social science research with results from software engineering research, and thereby identified three underlying concepts with an expected significant impact on software engineers’ attitudes towards organizational change, i.e. their knowledge about the intended change outcome, their understanding of the need for change, and their feelings of participation in the change process. The result of two separate multiple regression analysis, where we used industrial questionnaire data (N=56), showed that the attitude concept openness to change is predicted by all three concepts, while the attitude concept readiness for change is predicted by need for change and participation. Our research provides an empirical baseline to an important area of software engineering and the result can be a starting-point for future organizational change research. In addition, the proposed model prescribes practical directions for software engineering organizations to adopt in improving employees’ responses to change and, thus, increase the probability of a successful change.
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| 8. |
- Lenberg, Per, 1976, et al.
(författare)
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Human factors related challenges in software engineering - An industrial perspective
- 2015
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Ingår i: 8th International Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering (CHASE). - : IEEE. - 9781467370318
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- © 2015 IEEE. It is increasingly recognised that successful Software Engineering not only depends on technical or process issues, but requires attention to human factors. Researchers include such aspects which has led to both new theories and refined methods. However, it is not clear if professionals in the software industry agree that human factors are critical and what the related challenges and possibilities are. The purpose of the present study is to address this discrepancy. Using a qualitative research method, we elicited information about how and why human factors affect Software Engineering projects, which challenges are of special interest and the context in which they arise. Thematic analysis of data from interviews with nine senior software professionals in multiple Swedish software companies of differing size identified four main challenging areas. As supported by existing research, customer relations and communications were highlighted as important, but so too is the need for more holistic and multi-dimensional solutions and the importance of human factors in software organisational change. In addition, quantitative results indicate that the professionals see the organisational and group aspects as more important than the individual aspect. Our results can help to focus future research on matters that software practitioners consider important.
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| 9. |
- Lenberg, Per, 1976, et al.
(författare)
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Towards a Behavioral Software Engineering
- 2014
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Ingår i: CHASE 2014 Proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering. - New York, NY, USA : ACM. - 9781450328609 ; , s. 48-55
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Throughout the history of Software Engineering (SE) it has been repeatedly found that the humans involved, i.e. the engineers and developers in addition to other stakeholders, are a key factor in determining project outcomes and success. However, the amount of research that focuses on human aspects has been limited compared to research with technology or process focus. With increasing maturity of the field, interest in agile methods and a growing dissatisfaction with the continued challenges of developing high-quality software on time, the amount of SE research putting human aspect in primary focus has increased. In this paper we argue that a synthesized view of the emerging human-focused SE research is needed and can add value through giving focus, direction and help identify gaps. Taking cues from the addition of Behavioral Economics as an important part of the area of Economics we propose the term Behavioral Software Engineering (BSE) as an umbrella concept for research that focus on behavioral and social aspects in the work activities of software engineers. We propose that a model based on three units of analysis can give structure and point to concepts that are important for BSE. To add detail to this model we are conducting a systematic review to map out what is currently known. To exemplify the model and the area we here present the results from a subset of the identified concepts.
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| 10. |
- Marculescu, Bogdan, 1984, et al.
(författare)
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Objective re-weighting to guide an interactive search based software testing system
- 2013
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Ingår i: 2013 12th International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications, ICMLA 2013; Miami, FL; United States; 4 December 2013 through 7 December 2013. - Miami : IEEE. ; 2, s. 102-107
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Even hardware-focused industries today develop products where software is both a large and important component. Engineers tasked with developing and integrating these products do not always have a software engineering background. To ensure quality, tools are needed that automate and support software testing while allowing these domain specialists to leverage their knowledge and experience. Search-based testing could be a key aspect in creating an automated tool for supporting testing activities. However, domain specific quality criteria and trade-offs make it difficult to develop a general fitness function a priori, so interaction between domain specialists and such a tool would be critical to its success. In this paper we present a system for interactive search based software testing and investigate a way for domain specialists to guide the search by dynamically re-weighting quality goals. Our empirical investigation shows that objective reweighing can help a human domain specialist interactively guide the search, without requiring specialised knowledge of the system and without sacrificing population diversity.
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