JournalTOCs

Journal of Software Engineering Research and Development
Number of Followers: 10

This is an Open Access Journal

Open Access journal
ISSN (Print) 2195-1721
Published by SpringerOpen

[229 journals]

Modeling software processes from different domains using SPEM and BPMN
notations
- Authors: Carla Bezerra, Emanuel Coutinho
  Pages: 14:1 - 14:19
  Abstract: In a current application development scenario in different environments, technologies and contexts, such as IoT, Blockchain, Machine Learning and Cloud Computing, there is a need for particular solutions for domain-specific software development processes. The proper definition of software processes requires the understanding for the involved teams and organization’s particularities and specialized technical knowledge in Software Engineering. Although it is an essential part of Software Engineering, many university curricula do not dedicate as much effort to teaching software processes, focusing more on the basic principles of Software Engineering, such as requirements, architecture and programming languages. Another important aspect of software processes is modeling. The modeling of a software process provides a basis for managing, automating and supporting the software process improvement. In this context, teaching software process modeling becomes challenging, mainly due to the great emphasis on theory and few practices. This work presents an experience report teaching the definition and modeling of software processes in different domains. In the discipline of software processes, we applied a practice for defining and modeling processes in various application domains, such as: IoT, cloud, mobile, critical systems, self-adaptive systems, machine learning, blockchain and games. The processes were modeled in the Software Systems Process Engineering Metamodel (SPEM) and Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) notations based on references from the literature for each domain. We evaluated the process modeling practice with the SPEM and BPMN in two classes of the software processes discipline, and we had discussions about the use of the two notations applied to the different domains. In general, students reported good experiences in defining processes, highlighting the importance of practical modeling applications for professional life. As the main results of the study in teaching process modeling, we have that: (i) students accepted HEFLO tool better than EPF Composer tool; (ii) most students are not aware of specific domains and that anticipating the study of these domains in the discipline is a good strategy; and, (iii) the students also highlighted the need for more support for the two notation tools.
  PubDate: 2023-11-26
  DOI: 10.5753/jserd.2023.3186
  Issue No: Vol. 11, No. 1 (2023)
Technical Debt Guild
- Authors: Thober Detofeno, Andreia Malucelli, Sheila Reinehr
  Pages: 1:1 - 1:15
  Abstract: Efficient Technical Debt Management (TDM) requires specialized guidance so that decisions taken are oriented to add value to the business. Because it is a complex problem that involves several variables, TDM requires a systemic look that considers professionals' experiences from different specialties. Guilds have been a means technology companies have united specialized professionals around a common interest, especially those using the Spotify methodology. This paper presents the experience of implementing a guild to support TDM's activities in a software development organization using the action research method. The project lasted three years, and approximately 120 developers were involved in updating about 63,300 source-code files, 2,314 test cases, 2,097 automated test scripts, and the build pipeline. The actions resulting from the TDM guild's efforts impacted the company's culture by introducing new software development practices and standards. Besides, they positively influenced the quality of the artifacts delivered by the developers. This study shows that, as the company acquires maturity in TDM, it increases the need for professionals dedicated to TDM's activities.
  PubDate: 2023-01-17
  DOI: 10.5753/jserd.2023.2417
OSS in Software Engineering Education
- Authors: Fernanda Gomes Silva, Paulo Ezequiel D. Santos, Christina von Flach
  Pages: 2:1 - 2:14
  Abstract: Software Engineering is a crucial topic in undergraduate computing-related courses and provides the basic knowledge and skills necessary for professional practice in the software industry. Teaching Software Engineering principles, concepts, and practices and relating them to real-world scenarios are challenging tasks, and the adoption of Open Source Software (OSS) projects can help to face these challenges. On the other hand, adopting OSS projects as a didactic resource may introduce additional challenges to instructors who are not familiar with the OSS ecosystem. Objective: In this paper, we identified and mapped the profiles of instructors of Software Engineering courses concerning their classroom practices and use of OSS projects in Software Engineering Education. Method: We surveyed 90 higher education instructors in Brazil to collect data regarding their familiarity with the Software Engineering knowledge areas, pedagogical methods and resources used, and familiarity with and use of OSS projects in the classroom. Then, we resorted to data mining techniques, for instance, K-modes and Decision Tree algorithms, to identify instructors’ characteristics according to their classroom practices and use of OSS projects in the course activities. Results: Our findings include the characterization of instructors who use and instructors that do not use OSS projects in Software Engineering Education and the grouping of instructors after the application of the K-modes algorithm, and after the application of the Decision Tree algorithm, with similar characteristics of the pedagogical practices. The main result of this work is that the familiarity with OSS projects and the use of active learning methods were characteristics present in the application of the K-modes and Decision Tree algorithms, that distinguished instructors who used OSS projects from those that did not use them in Software Engineering Education. Finally, we confirmed that familiarity with OSS projects could have a positive influence on the instructors’ interest and potential for adopting this approach in Software Engineering Education.
  PubDate: 2023-01-18
  DOI: 10.5753/jserd.2023.1977
Investigating the Relationship between Technical Debt Management and
Software Development Issues
- Authors: Clara Berenguer, Adriano Borges, Sávio Freire, Nicolli Rios, Robert Ramač, Nebojša Taušan, Boris Pérez, Camilo Castellanos, Darío Correal, Alexia Pacheco, Gustavo López, Manoel Mendonça, Davide Falessi, Carolyn Seaman, Vladimir Mandić, Clemente Izurieta, Rodrigo Spínola
  Pages: 3:1 - 3:21
  Abstract: Context: The presence of technical debt (TD) brings risks to software projects. Managers must continuously find a cost-benefit balance between the benefits of incurring in TD and the costs of its presence in a software project. Much attention has been given to TD related to coding issues, but other types of debt can also have impactful consequences on projects. Aims: This paper seeks to elaborate on the growing need to expand TD research to other areas of software development, by analyzing six elements related to TD management, namely: causes, effects, preventive practices, reasons for non-prevention, repayment practices, and reasons for non-repayment of TD. Method: We survey and analyze, quantitatively and qualitatively, the answers of 653 software industry practitioners on TD to investigate how the previously mentioned elements are related to coding and non-coding issues of the software development process. Results: Coding issues are commonly related to the investigated elements but, indeed, they are only part of the TD Management stage. Issues related to the project planning and management, human factors, knowledge, quality, process, requirements, verification, validation, and test, design, architecture, and the organization are also common sources of TD. We organize the results in a hump diagram and specialize it considering the point of view of practitioners that have used agile, hybrid, and traditional process models in their projects. Conclusion: The hump diagram, in combination with the detailed results, provides guidance on what to expect from the presence of TD and how to react to it considering several issues of software development. The results shed light on TD management of software elements, beyond source code related artifacts.
  PubDate: 2023-02-03
  DOI: 10.5753/jserd.2023.2581
An Evaluation of Ranking-to-Learn Approaches for Test Case Prioritization
in Continuous Integration
- Authors: Jackson Antônio do Prado Lima, Silvia Regina Vergilio
  Pages: 4:1 - 4:20
  Abstract: Continuous Integration (CI) environments is a practice adopted by most organizations that allows frequent integration of software changes, making software evolution more rapid and cost-effective. Such environments require dynamic Test Case Prioritization (TCP) approaches that adapt better to the test budgets and frequent addition/removal of test cases. In this sense, Ranking-to-Learn approaches have been proposed and are more suitable for CI constraints. By observing past prioritizations and guided by reward functions, they learn the best prioritization for a given commit. In order to contribute for improvements and direct future research, this work evaluates how far the solutions produced by these approaches are from optimal solutions produced by a deterministic approach (ground truth). To this end, we consider two learning-based approaches i) RETECS, which is based on Reinforcement Learning; and ii) COLEMAN, an approach based on Multi-Armed Bandit. The evaluation was conducted with twelve systems, three test budgets, two reward functions, and six measures concerning fault detection effectiveness, early fault detection, test time reduction in the CI cycles, prioritization time, and accuracy. Our findings have some implications for the approaches application and reward function choice. The approaches are applicable in real scenarios and produce solutions very close to the optimal ones, respectively, in 92% and 75% of the cases. Both approaches have some limitations to learn with few historical test data (a small number of CI Cycles) and deal with a large test case set, in which many failures are distributed over many test cases.
  PubDate: 2023-02-07
  DOI: 10.5753/jserd.2023.2142
Naming Practices in Object-oriented Programming: An Empirical Study
- Authors: Remo Gresta, Vinicius Durelli, Elder Cirilo
  Pages: 5:1 - 5:16
  Abstract: Currently, research indicates that comprehending code takes up far more developer time than writing code. Given that most modern programming languages place little to no limitations on identifier names, and so developers are allowed to choose identifier names at their own discretion, one key aspect of code comprehension is the naming of identifiers. Research in naming identifiers shows that informative names are crucial to improving the readability and maintainability of programs: essentially, intention-revealing names make code easier to understand and act as a basic form of documentation. Poorly named identifiers tend to hurt the comprehensibility and maintainability of software systems. However, most computer science curricula emphasize programming concepts and language syntax over naming guidelines and conventions. Consequently, programmers lack knowledge about naming practices. This article is an extension of our previous study on naming practices. Previously, we set out to explore naming practices of Java programmers. To this end, we analyzed 1,421,607 identifier names (i.e., attributes, parameters, and variables names) from 40 open-source Java projects and categorized these names into eight naming practices. As a follow-up study to further investigate naming practices, we examined 40 open-source C++ projects and categorized 1,181,774 identifier names according to the previously mentioned eight naming practices. We examined the occurrence and prevalence of these categories across C++ and Java projects and our results also highlight in which contexts identifiers following each naming practice tend to appear more regularly. Finally, we also conducted an online survey questionnaire with 52 software developers to gain insight from the industry. All in all, we believe the results based on the analysis of 2,603,381 identifier names can be helpful to enhance programmers’ awareness and contribute to improving educational materials and code review methods.
  PubDate: 2023-02-28
  DOI: 10.5753/jserd.2023.2582
Insights from the application of Exploratory Tests in the daily life of
distributed teams: an experience report
- Authors: Jarbele C. S. Coutinho, Wilkerson L. Andrade, Patrícia D. L. Machado
  Pages: 6:1 - 6:19
  Abstract: The Exploratory Testing (ET) approach has been adopted in the context of agile development due to the effectiveness of its application. Due to these benefits, the need arose to train agile professionals based on the practical application of this type of test to contribute to its incorporation into the daily work of teams. In this sense, the objective of this article is to investigate the contributions and limitations of adopting Problem-Based Learning (PBL) and Just-in-Time Teaching (JiTT) in ET teaching-learning, and the main aspects that favor or limit the incorporation of ET into the day-to-day of agile teams. For this, we conducted a course in remote teaching format with agile professionals from a software development company, distributed geographically. At the end of the course, data were collected through an online questionnaire and examined with quantitative and qualitative analysis. Then, the ET activities performed by the participants in their daily lives were monitored and a brainstorming session was conducted to evaluate this experience. Our main findings are that (1) the collaboration between participants and the adoption of a real problem, along with (2) activities and resources made available before the class, and (3) the existence of specific tool support for ET sessions optimized learning in the context of remote teaching. Other main results refer to the planning and registration of ET and the need for guidelines to guide the execution of ET. Therefore, integrating theory and practice in ET is necessary for a better understanding of the effects of tests in the agile environment. Additionally, it is necessary to investigate specific approaches and tools that contribute to the execution of the ET and, consequently, to the incorporation of this test into the daily lives of the teams.
  PubDate: 2023-03-30
  DOI: 10.5753/jserd.2023.2646
Education, Innovation and Software Production: the contributions of the
Reflective Practice in a Software Studio
- Authors: Aline Andrade, Alessandro Maciel Schmidt, Tania Mara Dors, Regina Albuquerque, Fabio Binder, Dilmeire Vosgerau, Andreia Malucelli, Sheila Reinehr
  Pages: 7:1 - 7:12
  Abstract: The growth of the mobile phone market has been generating a great demand for professionals qualified for applications (APPs) development. The required profile includes technical skills, also known as hard skills, and behavioral or soft skills. The training of these professionals in speed, quantity, and quality demanded by the market poses a significant challenge for educational institutions. Apple and PUCPR have established a partnership to build a software studio to develop such talents using the Challenge Based Learning (CBL) method and associated practices whose effects need to be studied. This research aims to analyze the contributions of reflective practice in a software studio to teach the main professional competencies regarding app development, including hard and soft skills. The research method was the case study, based on semi-structured interviews with 28 participants in three cycles. The collected data were analyzed with open and axial coding from Grounded Theory and Atlas.ti tool. The results demonstrate that reflective practice, applied in a software studio environment that uses CBL was able to help students to map new ideas and acquire valuable hard and soft skills. The study pointed out that reflective practice is an effective instrument for developing the skills required by the app market, which demands innovation and quality at high speed.
  PubDate: 2023-04-11
  DOI: 10.5753/jserd.2023.2657
Identification and Management of Technical Debt
- Authors: Maria Isabel Murillo, Gustavo Lopez, Rodrigo Spinola, Julio Guzman, Nicolli Rios, Alexia Pacheco
  Pages: 8:1 - 8:20
  Abstract: Technical debt is a concept used to describe the lack of good practices during software development, leading to several problems and costs. Identification and management strategies can help reduce these difficulties. In a previous study, Alves et al. (2016) analyzed the research landscape of such strategies from 2010 to 2014. This paper replicates and updates their study to explore the evolution of technical debt identification and management research landscape over a decade, including literature from 2010 until 2022. We analyzed 117 papers from the ACM Digital Library, IEEE Xplore, Science Direct, and Springer Link. Newly suggested strategies include automatically identifying admitted debt in comments, commits, and source code. Between 2015 and 2022, more empirical evaluations have been performed, and the general research focus has changed to a more holistic approach. Therefore, the research area evolved and reached a new level of maturity compared to previous results from Alves et al. (2016). Not only are code aspects considered for technical debt, but other aspects have also been investigated (e.g., models for the development process).
  PubDate: 2023-08-03
  DOI: 10.5753/jserd.2023.2671
Software Architectural Practices: Influences on the Open Source Ecosystem
Health
- Authors: Simone da Silva Amorim, John D. McGregor, Eduardo Santana de Almeida, Christina von Flach Garcia Chavez
  Pages: 9:1 - 9:23
  Abstract: The health state of a software ecosystem has been determined by its capacity of growth and longevity. Three health indicators represent a healthy software ecosystem: robustness, productivity, and niche creation. Studies focusing on understanding the causes and processes of the state of health of ecosystems have used these indicators largely. Researchers have intensified studies to understand how to achieve a good health state. Despite the growing number of studies, there is little knowledge about influences and actions to achieve health and, more specifically, that consider the effects of the software architecture on the ecosystem. This article presents a study exploring seven open source ecosystems within different domains to describe the influence of architectural practices on the software ecosystem health in terms of their motivations and effects. Our main goal was to understand how the software architecture and related practices can contribute to a healthy ecosystem. We conducted a netnography-based study to gather practices used to create and maintain the software architecture of these ecosystems. Our study brings evidence that architectural practices play a critical role on the achievement of ecosystems’ health. We found fifty practices that have influenced different aspects of health indicators. We highlight the importance of five influential factors – business goals, experience, requirements, resources, and time-to-market – for motivating the adoption of such practices. These factors may also contribute to understanding different strategies used to achieve a good health status. Moreover, we proposed a novel health indicator, trustworthiness, that accounts for the normal operation of a healthy software ecosystem.
  PubDate: 2023-08-03
  DOI: 10.5753/jserd.2023.967
Identifying and Mitigating Risks in Estimation Process: a Case Study
Applying Action Research
- Authors: Ana M. Debiasi Duarte, Ieda Margarete Oro, Karine Vidor, Denio Duarte
  Pages: 10:1 - 10:8
  Abstract: Literature shows that a large part of software projects exceeds the amount of effort and estimation duration, even though we currently witness an evolution of software project management discipline. Through its best practices, software engineering tries to reduce the flaws in software development. Several techniques and resources have been
  presented to help to reduce this problem. This paper aims to propose an approach based on action research to improve the estimation process in software development tasks by identifying problems. A case study is carried out to show the effectiveness of our approach. The results show an improvement of 50% accuracy over the baseline estimation process.
  PubDate: 2023-08-23
  DOI: 10.5753/jserd.2023.3082
Simulation-supported development for cooperative Multi-UAV Systems with
the Mysterio framework
- Authors: Antônio Sávio Nascimento Cavalcante, Breno Bernard Nicolau de França
  Pages: 11:1 - 11:17
  Abstract: Over the years, UAVs (also known as drones) have been growing in studies and applications to solve diverse problems. Due to the complexity of these problems, dealing with just one UAV may not be enough, but using several UAVs together to work cooperatively increases its capacities, thus boosting innovative solutions. However, developing cooperative Multi-UAV systems is not trivial, and reuse support is usually limited to low-level implementation. This work presents a framework for Multi-UAVs, called Mysterio, which provides an underlying software architecture with essential Multi-UAV components, enabling the reuse of design and code so that engineers can instantiate it to carry out specific missions by making UAVs work in cooperation. We also present four instances of the framework to evaluate Mysterio’s effectiveness in different scenarios. Finally, we discuss the framework’s potential to provide and support design and code reuse to develop Cooperative Multi-UAVs systems for different application scenarios. The results showed the potential to develop multi-UAV systems using the proposed framework. Additionally, we extend our previous work bringing conceptual evolution and advances in the architecture and the framework. Finally, this evolution extends the framework API to support computer simulations of UAV systems based on the OMNeT++ simulator. This API is suitable for Single-UAV and Multi-UAV systems and has already been adapted to communicate with base stations implemented through the Mysterio Framework.
  PubDate: 2023-09-06
  DOI: 10.5753/jserd.2023.3314
Investigating the Point of View of Project Management Practitioners on
Technical Debt - A Study on Stack Exchange
- Authors: Felipe Gomes, Eder Santos, Sávio Freire, Thiago Souto Mendes, Manoel Mendonça, Rodrigo Spínola
  Pages: 12:1 - 12:15
  Abstract: Context: Technical debt (TD) can bring short-term benefits to software projects, but its presence is associated with issues such as decreasing product quality. Recent literature has proposed various approaches for identifying and managing TD, but most of them focus on the software developers’ point of view. Little is known about how project management practitioners perceive and manage TD items. Goal: This work aims to investigate how project management practitioners discuss and experience TD. Method: To achieve this goal, our work mines, curates, and selects a total of 108 TD-related discussions on the Stack Exchange Project Management (SEPM) Q&A site. These discussions amount to 547 posts and 882 text comments on the subject. We analyze this data set quantitatively and qualitatively, using open coding to derive TD types, indicators, and management practices. Results: We identified 74 indicators used for recognizing debt items and 126 TD management practices. The types of debt most discussed at SEPM are process and people debts. This contradicts studies done with developers where code and design debts are most discussed. Conclusion: The perspective considered by project management practitioners to analyze the TD phenomenon is different from the one considered by other roles in the software development process. Our work organizes the identified TD indicators and management practices into a Sankey diagram, which may assist TD management practitioners and serve as guidance for future research on the subject.
  PubDate: 2023-09-06
  DOI: 10.5753/jserd.2023.3191
Test smell refactoring revisited: What can internal quality attributes and
developers’ experience tell us'
- Authors: Humberto Damasceno, Carla Bezerra, Denivan Campos, Ivan Machado, Emanuel Coutinho
  Pages: 13:1 - 13:16
  Abstract: Test smells represent a set of poorly designed tests, which can harm test code maintainability. Although fundamental steps to understand test smells have been taken, there is still an evident lack of studies evaluating the impact of test smell refactoring from the perspective of internal quality attributes, such as size, cohesion, coupling, and complexity. In addition, the literature still lacks research that addresses the difficulties developers face during test smell refactoring. This article investigates the impact of test smell refactoring from a developer’s perspective, considering the internal quality attributes and the background experience. We investigated the perceptions and difficulties encountered by 20 developers while removing five types of test smells in four open-source projects over two months. Through this study, we analyzed: (i) the impact that test smell refactoring has on internal quality attributes; (ii) the developers’ perception of test smells as actual problems within software systems; (iii) the main difficulties developers face during test smell refactoring; (iv) the influence of developers’ experience on assertiveness and refactoring time of test smells, and (v) the effects of refactoring on the test smell density. Our findings can help developers design a prioritization scheme for test smell refactoring and make them aware of the real benefits of test smell refactoring.
  PubDate: 2023-10-03
  DOI: 10.5753/jserd.2023.3195