The Tarpit – A general theory of software engineering

Johnson, Pontus; Ekstedt, Mathias

doi:10.1016/j.infsof.2015.06.001

Cited by 27 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 86 publications

(152 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…As a result, continues Kajko-Mattsson (2012), also echoed by Johnson, Ekstedt & Jacobson (2012), the research community lacks a deep, yet basic understanding of the software development life-cycle and the theory behind all software engineering activities. We support the recent request for developing theories in software engineering and we agree with several authors that theory is what software engineering is missing the most (Ralph, Johnson & Jordan, 2013;Johnson et al, 2013;Johnson, Ekstedt & Jacobson, 2012;Johnson & Ekstedt, 2015;Wohlin, Šmite & Moe, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 87%

A theory on individual characteristics of successful coding challenge solvers

Wyrich

Graziotin

Wagner

2019

PeerJ Computer Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background Assessing a software engineer’s ability to solve algorithmic programming tasks has been an essential part of technical interviews at some of the most successful technology companies for several years now. We do not know to what extent individual characteristics, such as personality or programming experience, predict the performance in such tasks. Decision makers’ unawareness of possible predictor variables has the potential to bias hiring decisions which can result in expensive false negatives as well as in the unintended exclusion of software engineers with actually desirable characteristics. Methods We conducted an exploratory quantitative study with 32 software engineering students to develop an empirical theory on which individual characteristics predict the performance in solving coding challenges. We developed our theory based on an established taxonomy framework by Gregor (2006). Results Our findings show that the better coding challenge solvers also have better exam grades and more programming experience. Furthermore, conscientious as well as sad software engineers performed worse in our study. We make the theory available in this paper for empirical testing. Discussion The theory raises awareness to the influence of individual characteristics on the outcome of technical interviews. Should the theory find empirical support in future studies, hiring costs could be reduced by selecting appropriate criteria for preselecting candidates for on-site interviews and potential bias in hiring decisions could be reduced by taking suitable measures.

show abstract

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 87%

A theory on individual characteristics of successful coding challenge solvers

Wyrich

Graziotin

Wagner

2019

PeerJ Computer Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…As a result, continues Kajko-Mattsson (2012), also echoed by Johnson et al (2012), the research community lacks a deep, yet basic understanding of the software development life-cycle and the theory behind all software engineering activities. We support the recent request for developing theories in software engineering and we agree with several authors that theory is what software engineering is missing the most (Ralph et al, 2013;Johnson et al, 2013Johnson et al, , 2012Johnson and Ekstedt, 2015;Wohlin et al, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 88%

Peer Review #2 of "A theory on individual characteristics of successful coding challenge solvers (v0.1)"

2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background. Assessing a software engineer's ability to solve algorithmic programming tasks has been an essential part of technical interviews at some of the most successful technology companies for several years now. We do not know to what extent individual characteristics, such as personality or programming experience, predict the performance in such tasks. Decision makers' unawareness of possible predictor variables has the potential to bias hiring decisions which can result in expensive false negatives as well as in the unintended exclusion of software engineers with actually desirable characteristics. Methods. We conducted an exploratory quantitative study with 32 software engineering students to develop an empirical theory on which individual characteristics predict the performance in solving coding challenges. We developed our theory based on an established taxonomy framework by Gregor (2006). Results. Our findings show that the better coding challenge solvers also have better exam grades and more programming experience. Furthermore, conscientious as well as sad software engineers performed worse in our study. We make the theory available in this paper for empirical testing. Discussion. The theory raises awareness to the influence of individual characteristics on the outcome of technical interviews. Should the theory find empirical support in future studies, hiring costs could be reduced by selecting appropriate criteria for preselecting candidates for on-site interviews and potential bias in hiring decisions could be reduced by taking suitable measures.

show abstract

“…NaPiRE aims to improve on all these aspects in the area of requirements engineering. Tarpit [26] is an example of a more general theory of software engineering derived from four underlying theoretical fields, i.e., (1) languages and automata, (2) cognitive architecture, (3) problem solving, and (4) organisation structure. Its applicability was explored in the cases of Brooks' law, domain specific languages and continuous integration.…”

Section: Theories On Requirements Engineeringmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Study population including response rates, total obtained, completed datasets, and completion rates. crosscutting (60) public (28) sector (28) enterprise (20) finance (26) planning (20) resource (23) automotive (15) healthcare (14) management (16) business ( 9 ) energy (11) insurance (11) logistics (8) telecom (9) transportation (8) aerospace (5) education (5) gas (5) geoprocessing (4) informed (5) intelligence (4) oil (5) process (5) aviation 3communication 3construction 3defence 3e-commerce (3) entertainment (3) games (3) human (3) shipping (3) workforce (3) agriculture 2chemicals ( 2 ) customer (2) electronic (2) railway (2) relationship (2) scientific (2) software (2) automation 1egovernment (1) funerary (1) goods (1) industrial (1) networking (1) pulp (1) steel (1) business domains, ranging from embedded software...…”

Section: Study Populationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Status Quo in Requirements Engineering

Wagner

Fernández

Felderer

et al. 2019

ACM Trans. Softw. Eng. Methodol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Context: Requirements Engineering (RE) has established itself as a software engineering discipline over the past decades. While researchers have been investigating the RE discipline with a plethora of empirical studies, attempts to systematically derive an empirical theory in context of the RE discipline have just recently been started. However, such a theory is needed if we are to define and motivate guidance in performing high quality RE research and practice. Objective: We aim at providing an empirical and externally valid foundation for a theory of RE practice, which helps software engineers establish effective and efficient RE processes in a problem-driven manner. Method: We designed a survey instrument and an engineer-focused theory that was first piloted in Germany and, after making substantial modifications, has now been replicated in 10 countries worldwide. We have a theory in the form of a set of propositions inferred from our experiences and available studies, as well as the results from our pilot study in Germany. We evaluate the propositions with bootstrapped confidence intervals and derive potential explanations for the propositions. Results: In this article, we report on the design of the family of surveys, its underlying theory, and the full results obtained from the replication studies conducted in 10 countries with participants from 228 organisations. Our results represent a substantial step forward towards developing an empirical theory of RE practice. The results reveal, for example, that there are no strong differences between organisations in different countries and regions, that interviews, facilitated meetings and prototyping are the most used elicitation techniques, that requirements are often documented textually, that traces between requirements and code or design documents are common, that requirements specifications themselves are rarely changed and that requirements engineering (process) improvement endeavours are mostly internally driven. Conclusion: Our study establishes a theory that can be used as starting point for many further studies for more detailed investigations. Practitioners can use the results as theory-supported guidance on selecting suitable RE methods and techniques. CCS Concepts: • General and reference → Empirical studies; • Software and its engineering → Requirements analysis;

show abstract

The Tarpit – A general theory of software engineering

Cited by 27 publications

References 86 publications

A theory on individual characteristics of successful coding challenge solvers

A theory on individual characteristics of successful coding challenge solvers

Peer Review #2 of "A theory on individual characteristics of successful coding challenge solvers (v0.1)"

Status Quo in Requirements Engineering

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About