A Holistic Overview of Software Engineering Research Strategies

Stol, Klaas-Jan; Fitzgerald, Brian

doi:10.1109/cesi.2015.15

Cited by 12 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…Following the classification proposed by Stol e Fitzgerald [7], our study follows the Judgment Task strategy, in which participants are asked to judge and measure behavior or discuss topics of interest. The sample is systematic, although non-representative.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…With a prototypical language editor and transformations implemented into an Eclipse plugin, we carried out an empirical study, with requirement analysts working for a government software company in Brazil, to evaluate usability and effectiveness of the GIRL-based analysis of real software requirements. Using as strategy judgment tasks [7], ten (10) participants assessed language understanding, verification effectiveness, and general usefulness, after receiving appropriate training. The data provides positive and negative evidence on the perception about GIRL, which we could speculate as recurrent in graphical notations with hidden formal verification.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Domain-Specific Language for Verifying Software Requirement Constraints

Vidal¹,

Massoni²,

Ramalho³

2019

Preprint

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Software requirement analysis can certainly benefit from prevention and early detection of failures, in particular by some kind of automatic analysis. Formal methods offer means to represent and analyze requirements with rigorous tools, avoiding ambiguities and allowing automatic verification of requirement consistency. However, formalisms often clash in the culture or lack of skills of software analysts, making them challenging to apply. In this article, we propose a Domain-Specific Language (DSL) based on Set Theory for requirement analysts. The Graphical InvaRiant Language (GIRL) can be used to specify software requirement structural invariants, with entities and their relationships. Those invariants can then have their consistency evaluated by the Alloy Analyzer, based on a mapping semantics we provide for transforming GIRL models into Alloy specifications with no user intervention. With a prototypical language editor and transformations implemented into an Eclipse plugin, we carried out a qualitative study with requirement analysts working for a government software company in Brazil, to evaluate usability and effectiveness of the GIRL-based analysis of real software requirements. The participants were able to effectively use the underlying formal analysis, since 79 out of 80 assigned invariants were correctly modeled. While participants perceived as low the complexity of learning and using GIRL's simplest, set-based structures and relationships, the most complex logical structures, such as quantification and implication, were challenging. Furthermore, almost all post-study evaluations from the participants were positive, especially as a tool for discovering requirement inconsistencies.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Domain-Specific Language for Verifying Software Requirement Constraints

Vidal¹,

Massoni²,

Ramalho³

2019

Preprint

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“…In their paper, Stol and Fitzgerald [29] categorize studies according to four scales. They aim to provide a holistic view over existing research methods in • Focus This scale has three categories, 'actor', 'context', and 'behavior'.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparing the Applicability of Complexity Measurements for Simulink Models during Integration Testing -- An Industrial Case Study

Schroeder

Berger

Herpel³

et al. 2015

2015 IEEE/ACM 2nd International Workshop on Software Architecture and Metrics

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Context: The importance of software maintainability is well-addressed by software engineering research, in general. Particularly for object-oriented and open-source software, measurements as a means to represent maintainability are well-established. Nevertheless, there is a lack of a similar understanding for software maintainability of executable models, which are widely used in the automotive industry, predominantly, using Simulink. Maintainability for automotive software is the main setting of this thesis. Software growth and complexity which are concepts related to maintainability are also investigated. Objective: In this thesis, we aim to investigate maintainability for model-based software in the automotive domain. We explore the aspects it consists of, elicit maintainability measurements, and assess their applicability in practice. Additionally, we investigate two approaches to evaluate existing measurement data. First, we show how outliers with a significant impact on software quality can be identified in measurement data. Second, regarding software growth in the context of Simulink models, we show which predictions are relevant to practitioners, how these can be reliably conducted, and which environmental factors software growth is affected by. Lastly, in this thesis, we aim to present a practical implementation of software quality-focused design and evaluation of an automotive software architecture. Method: As Simulink models are widely used in the automotive industry, we always work in close collaboration with practitioners from industry. Hence, the majority of the work presented in this thesis has been performed in the form of case studies within the automotive industry in Sweden and Germany. In addition, we always associate findings from the industry with current research using literature. We use multiple qualitative and quantitative research methods. This includes literature reviews, interviews and workshops with practitioners in industry, surveys, and software measurement with consecutive data analysis and hypothesis testing. Results: In this thesis, we present a categorized list of aspects related to the maintainability of Simulink models, as well as a list of measures for the maintainability of Simulink models ranked by practitioners from industry. We provide evidence that simple size measures can be more applicable maintainability measures in practice than more complex measures. We present an approach to detect impactful outliers in measurement data. Furthermore, concerning software growth, we list environmental factors affecting software growth measurement and prediction. We further provide a collection of practitioners' expectations towards growth predictions and rank prediction approaches for growth measurements by their applicability in industry. Lastly, we present an approach to the design and evaluate a software architecture in the automotive industry. Conclusion: With these results, we provide a taxonomy of maintainability for Simulink models and respective measurements. Together with the...

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“…For SE, it is necessary to distinguish between two types of scientific knowledge: science and technology, knowledge for understanding and knowledge for a purpose [7]. Starting from the fact that the scientific approach typically consists of observation, measurement, and experimentation [8].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Empirical Strategies in Software Engineering Research: A Literature Survey

Guevara‐Vega

Bernárdez

Durán

et al. 2021

2021 Second International Conference on Information Systems and Software Technologies (ICI2ST)

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The Software Engineering (SE) research continues to gain strength and interest for researchers considering the need to apply rigor and scientific validity to research results. Objective: Establishing an overview of the topic through a classification scheme of publications and structure the field of interest. Method: We conducted a Systematic Mapping Study, including articles published until 2019, that report at least one study of empirical strategies in SE. Results: 80 initial sets of studies were selected and analyzed, identifying: i) empirical strategy type used and ii) Software Engineering hypotheses types used. Also, 20 papers of the set of studies for mapping were selected and analyzed, identifying 17 empirical strategies and 11 main characteristics to address the empirical research inception in SE. Conclusions: We corroborate that the selection of an empirical strategy in Software Engineering research depends on the nature and scope of the research and on the resources that the researcher has at that moment, in addition to the degree of scientific and methodological knowledge that he has to carry out an empirical study. It is necessary to continue studying in-depth the behavior and nature of the empirical strategies in Software Engineering research that allows strengthening the scientific taxonomy in SE, besides walking towards the automation of the experimental process.

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A Holistic Overview of Software Engineering Research Strategies

Cited by 12 publications

References 45 publications

A Domain-Specific Language for Verifying Software Requirement Constraints

A Domain-Specific Language for Verifying Software Requirement Constraints

Comparing the Applicability of Complexity Measurements for Simulink Models during Integration Testing -- An Industrial Case Study

Empirical Strategies in Software Engineering Research: A Literature Survey

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