Saturday, February 25, 2012

Motivation in software engineering...


Motivation in Software Engineering (review of systematic review)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.infsof.2007.09.004

I've read this paper and recommend it to managers who instantly seek how to motivate their employees. What I find particularly interesting is that they actually reflect on the question "Who are software engineers?" - please take a look at their research questions, they really do a nice work!


RQ1: What are the characteristics of Software Engineers?
RQ2: What (de)motivates Software Engineers to be more (less) productive?
RQ3: What are the external signs or outcomes of (de)motivated Software Engineers?
RQ4: What aspects of Software Engineering (de)motivate Software Engineers?
RQ5: What models of motivation exist in Software Engineering?


In the light of this I like this main result best: "M. 17 Identify with the task (clear goals, personal interest, know purpose of task, how it fits in with whole, job satisfaction; producing identifiable piece of quality work)" which is the number one motivational factor for software engineering professionals. This means that code-ownership practices stimulate and help the practitioners to feel needed. So, let me ask a question: How about off-shoring? 24/7 development? Who owns the code? Who is motivated?

Ok, it was more than one question, but still. I've seen this happening in many companies - off-shore does not mean better.

@MiroslawStaron




When to stop testing...

Quantifying software validation...
http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/52.28120

The article is probably the predecessor of modern statistical methods in testing. It postulates that statistics could help in finding out when to release. I would also like to point the attention that this article came out of Bell Labs, where maturity modelling - a way of statistical software quality modelling - has been practiced since the 80's.

I recommend this article as a starting point and a reflection point for the testing teams... can we build simple models that would show that we've reached the saturation point? What if we relate it to the previous blog entry - coverate metrics.... hmm... I'll try that in my next development project.

If anyone has more articles in this line - please do not hesitate to recommend them to me and I'll make sure to put them in the blog.

Saturday, February 18, 2012

Test Coverage and Post-Verification Defects: A Multiple Case Study

Why your test coverage is never going to be 100%...
http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ESEM.2009.5315981

Yet again MS Research has proven to provide interesting and nice paper. In this article they describe dependencies between test effort, test coverage and post-release defect inflow.

It is interesting to note that the effort grows exponentially with test coverage while the post-release quality only linearly. I will recommend that to my students who often ask about the cost of quality....

Looking forward to more research from MS.