Guide to Advanced Empirical
Download 1.5 Mb. View original pdf
|
3299771.3299772, BF01324126
| Indirect techniques Instrumenting Software usage over along Large Software systems period, for many participants usage analysis Fly on the wall Time spent intermittently in one Medium location, patterns of activities particularly collaboration) Independent techniques Analysis of work Long-term patterns relating to Large Metrics databases software evolution, faults etc. gathering Analysis of Details of tool usage Large tool use logs Documentation Design and documentation Medium Reverse analysis practices, general engineering understanding Static and dynamic Design and programming Large Program analysis practices, general comprehension, understanding metrics, testing, etc. 12 J. Singer et al. Inquisitive techniques allow the experimenter to obtain a general understanding of the software engineering process. Such techniques are probably the only way to gauge how enjoyable or motivating certain tools are to use or certain activities to perform. However, they are often subjective, and additionally do not allow for accurate time measurements. Observational techniques provide a real-time portrayal of the studied phenomena. However, it is more difficult to analyze the data, both because it is dense and because it requires considerable knowledge to interpret correctly. Observational techniques can be used at randomly chosen times or when a software engineer is engaged in a specific type of activity (such as whenever she is using a debugger. Observational techniques always run the risk of changing the process simply by observing it the Hawthorne (Draper, 2004; Robbins, 1994) effect was first identified when a group of researchers found that output was not related to environmental conditions as expected, but rather to whether or not workers were being observed. Careful consideration of this effect is therefore warranted in implementing the research and explaining its purpose and protocol to the research participants. Download 1.5 Mb. Share with your friends:
|