Theorizing about software development practices

Abstract

The paper focuses on the challenge of generating theoretical support for software development, especially when human software developers are involved in the software development process. We outline a model, "Coat Hanger", for theorizing about development practices. The model focuses on the intended rationale for the actual realization and resulting impacts of using particular practices in varying contexts. To illustrate the use of the model, we have studied recent practice-oriented articles in the journal Science of Computer Programming. A survey of articles in the journal between 2010 and 2013 showed that out of 371 articles, only four studied software development in professional organizations with actual software practitioners as informants. The Coat Hanger model was then used to identify the theoretical strengths and weaknesses of these four practice descriptions. The analysis is used as the basis to declare the potential of our model as a conceptual aid for more structured theorizing about software development practices. The contribution of the model is the introduction of a concretization of how theorizing can be done through reflection-in-action, instead of regarding research on software practices plainly from the prevailing viewpoint of technical rationality.

The Tarpit – A general theory of software engineering

“…authors, reviewers and program committee members for the GTSE workshop series [1][2][3] and associated special issues [4]), we find contributors with an engineering-oriented perspective [38][39][40][41][42][43] as well as participants influenced by the social sciences (typically via the information systems discipline) [44][45][46][47][48]. This broad community seems to contain also differing views on epistemology.…”

“…This broad community seems to contain also differing views on epistemology. Schön, an author cited by some GTSE authors [44,46], describes the differing viewpoints as follows:…”

“…A number of relevant articles were published in these fora, including theoretical proposals by Ralph [46,169], Perry [39,170], Adolph and Kruchten [47], Erbas and Erbas [43,171] and Smolander and Päivärinta [44,172]. Another recent addition to the stream of publications on software engineering theory is an article by Dieter Rombach, also published in 2013 [5].…”

Distilling a body of knowledge for information systems development

“…Hence, systems developers have to understand the working situation of others, become savvy politicians who can handle project uncertainty and conflict, be familiar with different domains of industry and work with people having different educational backgrounds and experiences (Andersen, 1990). The computer science field itself is beginning to acknowledge the importance of these social and practice‐related aspects of SE (Päivärinta & Smolander, ; Dittrich, ).…”

What does it mean to use a method? Towards a practice theory for software engineering

“…not only empirically but also based on a set of concepts that allows the explaining of the observed phenomena. In their article 'Theorizing about Software Development Practice,' Pävärinta and Smolander [11] propose developing a theory of software development practice based on empirical research. This current article proposes a specific way to conceptualise practices, their rationales and their relation to contextual contingencies.…”