How Do Software Developers Identify Design Problems?

Sousa, Leonardo; Oliveira, Roberto; Garcia, Alessandro; Lee, Jaejoon; Conte, Tayana; Oizumi, Willian; Mello, Rafael de; Lopes, Adriana; Valentim, Natasha Malveira Costa; Oliveira, Edson; Lucena, Carlos José Pereira de

doi:10.1145/3131151.3131168

Cited by 15 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…Sousa et al have shown that developers often combine multiple symptoms to identify design problems [41]. However, they did not observe how that combination took place.…”

Section: Symptom Analysis In Symptom Analysis Developers Choosementioning

confidence: 98%

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Identifying design problems in the source code

Sousa

Oliveira

Oizumi

et al. 2018

Proceedings of the 40th International Conference on Software Engineering

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The prevalence of design problems may cause re-engineering or even discontinuation of the system. Due to missing, informal or outdated design documentation, developers often have to rely on the source code to identify design problems. Therefore, developers have to analyze different symptoms that manifest in several code elements, which may quickly turn into a complex task. Although researchers have been investigating techniques to help developers in identifying design problems, there is little knowledge on how developers actually proceed to identify design problems. In order to tackle this problem, we conducted a multi-trial industrial experiment with professionals from 5 software companies to build a grounded theory. The resulting theory offers explanations on how developers identify design problems in practice. For instance, it reveals the characteristics of symptoms that developers consider helpful. Moreover, developers often combine different types of symptoms to identify a single design problem. This knowledge serves as a basis to further understand the phenomena and advance towards more effective identification techniques.

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“…Sousa et al have shown that developers often combine multiple symptoms to identify design problems [41]. However, they did not observe how that combination took place.…”

Section: Symptom Analysis In Symptom Analysis Developers Choosementioning

confidence: 98%

“…As far as we are concerned, Sousa et al is the only study that has proposed to explain how developers identify design problems [41]. However, they fell short of framing their results as a theory.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Identifying design problems in the source code

Sousa

Oliveira

Oizumi

et al. 2018

Proceedings of the 40th International Conference on Software Engineering

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…According to Sousa et al, 26 a software design problem occurs when a software design decision has a negative impact on one or more quality attributes of the software. A design problem impacts on some of the key properties (such as extensibility and maintainability, robustness, comprehensibility, and performance) of a software system.…”

Section: Background and Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

A critical assessment of the design issues in e‐commerce systems development

Ehikioya

Guillemot

2020

Engineering Reports

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Designers of electronic commerce (e-commerce) transaction system applications face many challenges; some are old while others are emerging because of the emerging nature of the e-commerce domain itself. This article examines the critical design challenges at different stages of the design process of e-commerce applications. The high-level designs have a large number of new issues specific to Web applications. Among them, the security and networking problems are the most determinant for the success of the applications. At the detailed design level, the languages and the user interface are major concerns. The user interface, specific to the Web, forces designers to redefine the traditional concept of the end user for the more appropriate customer-centric concept. This is necessary to address the needs of consumers and for the survival of e-commerce businesses.In addition, we also examine issues bothering the development team and the e-commerce environment. Designers experienced in non-Web applications can be more successful at developing e-commerce applications if they address the issues we identified in this article in a creative way. K E Y W O R D Sdesign issues, e-commerce, e-commerce systems/application INTRODUCTIONThe concept of electronic commerce (e-commerce) has crystallized into a fairly well understood concept 1-7 ; its popularity and fast paced acceptance as an alternative to the brick and mortar market economic model 3,8 tend to undermine a clear understanding, and clear exposition of the characteristics, of e-commerce. Most adherents of e-commerce often focus only on the exchange of value end product 6,7 without paying close attention to, or knowing the intricacies of, the underlying transaction itself. 1,4,[9][10][11][12][13] Therefore, a proper characterization of e-commerce applications is fundamental. We focus on the design challenges in e-commerce transactions in a typical business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce domain, which is more popular, more widely patronized by users, and attracts a higher volume of e-commerce transactions. The B2C e-commerce includes retail transactions of products or services from businesses to individual shoppers (ie, businesses sell products or services to individual consumers). Thus, the seller is a business organization whereas the buyer is a consumer.

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“…Other studies have focused on investigating the identification of design problems from the perspective of developers as well [47,48]. Sousa et al [47] conducted a qualitative study to investigate how developers identify design problems in practice. In their study, the authors observed the actions that developers apply to identify design problems.…”

Section: Other Approaches To Identify Design Problemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the identification of design problems in stinky code: experiences and tool support

et al. 2018

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Background: Developers often have to locate design problems in the source code. Several types of design problems may manifest as code smells in the program. A code smell is a source code structure that may reveal a partial hint about the manifestation of a design problem. Recent studies suggest that developers should ignore smells occurring in isolation in a program location. Instead, they should focus on analyzing stinkier code, i.e., program locations-e.g., a class or a hierarchy-affected by multiple smells. There is evidence that the stinkier a program location is, the more likely it contains a design problem. However, there is no empirical evidence on whether developers can effectively identify a design problem in stinkier code. Developers may struggle to make an analysis of inter-related smells affecting the same program location. Besides that, the analysis of stinkier code may require proper tool support due to its analysis complexity. However, there is little knowledge on what are the requirements for a tool that helps developers in revealing stinkier program locations. As a result, developers may not be able to identify design problems due to tool issues. Method: To address this matter, we aimed at achieving three goals. In the first case, we proposed Organic-a tool supporting the analysis of stinky code. In the second case, we applied a mixed-method approach to analyze if and how developers can effectively find design problems when reflecting upon stinky code-i.e., a program location affected by multiple smells. We conducted a study with 11 software professionals. Finally, in the third case, we aimed at understanding if Organic could be used by developers to identify design problems. To achieve this goal, we used a method from the Semiotic Engineering theory. This method enabled us to evaluate what are the tool issues that may hinder the identification of design problems in stinky code. Result: Our study revealed that only 36.36% of the developers found more design problems when explicitly reasoning about multiple smells as compared to single smells. Moreover, 63.63% of the developers reported much lesser false positives when using the first approach as compared to the latter. The second study, in its turn, showed that most developers may be unable to identify design problems in stinky code without proper tool support. Conclusion: Our experiences, in particular the second study, helped us to refine the features of Organic for better supporting developers in reflecting upon stinkier code. For example, analyses of stinky code scattered in class hierarchies or packages is often difficult, time-consuming, and requires proper visualization support. Moreover, without effective support, it remains time-consuming to discard stinky program locations that do not represent design problems.

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How Do Software Developers Identify Design Problems?

Cited by 15 publications

References 28 publications

Identifying design problems in the source code

Identifying design problems in the source code

A critical assessment of the design issues in e‐commerce systems development

On the identification of design problems in stinky code: experiences and tool support

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