A study into the practice of reporting software engineering experiments

It has been argued that reporting software engineering experiments in a standardized way helps researchers find relevant information, understand how experiments were conducted and assess the validity of their results. Various guidelines have been proposed specifically for software engineering experiments. The benefits of such guidelines have often been emphasized, but the actual uptake and practice of reporting have not yet been investigated since the introduction of many of the more recent guidelines. In this research, we utilize a mixed-method study design including sequence analysis techniques for evaluating to which extent papers follow such guidelines. Our study focuses on the four most prominent software engineering journals and the time period from 2000 to 2020. Our results show that many experimental papers miss information suggested by guidelines, that no de facto standard sequence for reporting exists, and that many papers do not cite any guidelines. We discuss these findings and implications for the discipline of experimental software engineering focusing on the review process and the potential to refine and extend guidelines, among others, to account for theory explicitly.

TESE - Um sistema de Informação para Gerenciamento de Projetos Experimentais em Engenharia de Software

A Engenharia de Software Experimental é uma das subáreas da Engenharia de Software (ES) e seu objetivo é aprimorar métodos, técnicas e ferramentas da ES, a partir de métodos experimentais. Um projeto experimental envolve várias etapas e atividades que devem ser realizadas pelo pesquisador e participante, gerando grande quantidade documentos. Este trabalho aborda experimentação em engenharia de software, apresentando uma ferramenta para gerenciamento de projetos experimentais, denominada TESE (Tool for Experimental Software Engineering), cujo principal diferencial está na disponibilização de ajudas aos seus usários, com relação aos conceitos da Engenharia de Software Experimental. Foi realizada uma avaliaçãoo da ferramenta com alunos e ex-alunos do curso de Bacharelado em Ciências da Computação da Universidade Federal de Goiás (Regional Jataí). Para isso, utilizou-se um questionário construído com base no modelo TAM (Technology Acceptance Model), com o intuito de averiguar o que os avaliadores pensam a respeito da utilidade e da facilidade de uso da ferramenta TESE. O resultado foi considerado positivo, pois, em média 80%, dos avaliadores concordaram que a ferramenta apresenta boa utilidade e facilidade de uso.

Preface to the CIbSE/ESELAW 2012 Special Issue

This special issue of the CLEI Electronic Journal consists of extended and revised versions of articles presented at the XV Ibero-American Conference on Software Engineering (CIbSE 2012) and the IX Experimental Software Engineering Latin American Workshop (ESELAW 2012), which took place in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in April 2012.

Human-Centered Design of a Semantically Enabled Knowledge Management System for Agile Software Engineering

Developing human-engineered systems is considered as a challenge that addresses a wide area of expertise; computer scientists as well as social scientists. These experts have to work together closely in teams in order to build intelligent systems to support agile software development. The methodology developed in the RISE project enables and supports the design of human-centered knowledge-sharing platforms, such as Wikis based on standards in the field of education science. The project “RISE” (Reuse In Software Engineering) is part of the research program “Software Engineering 2006” funded by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF). The goal was to improve the reuse of artifacts in software engineering, and brought together researchers from education science (The Department of Educational Sciences and Professional Development at the Technical University of Kaiserslautern) and computer science (Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering (IESE) and the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI)) with industrial partners (Empolis GmbH and brainbot technologies AG). This chapter gives an overview about the human-centered design of Wiki-based knowledge and learning management systems in software engineering projects, and raises several requirements one should keep in mind when building human-centered systems to support knowledge and learning management.